Twists and turns in the 360 deal: Spinning the risks and rewards of artist–label relations in the streaming era

This article studies the contracts of labels and artists in the 2000s and 2010s in order to understand the conditions for creative work in a predominantly digital environment. It argues that contract negotiation is a key site for the exchange of creative and economic resources which is likely to reflect developments in the technological but also legal frameworks of the music industry. It presents analyses of contract documents from before and after the rise of streaming services, capturing the turn away from the album and towards the smaller project of the single, which, among other things, entails higher royalty rates for the artists but also increases their responsibilities for financing production. The article goes on to discuss the extent to which such shifts in the investments and returns of both creator and company should be accompanied by changes in the legal protections of creative work.

The Use of Discourse Maps to Teach Contract Negotiation Communicative Practices

This article reports on the use of discourse maps in conjunction with genre and discourse analysis to help teach communicative practices for contract negotiation. Using one map as a baseline to understand the intertextual process of negotiating a contract in communication with business clients and counterpart lawyers, other maps can zoom in and examine the discursive features of email genres, cover letters, and different versions of the contract under negotiation. The type of discourse maps developed in this study can be utilized for task-based writing materials and role-play activities that facilitate the authentic experience of negotiating a business deal.

The intertextual nature of embedded email communication for contract negotiation activities

Emails have become the institutionalised communication medium for many discourse activities in work contexts. Sociolinguistic research in this area has mainly focused on the textual and communicative conventions of emails, as defined by disciplinary cultures and practices. This study is the first to analyse the intertextual nature of email communication for commercial contract negotiation purposes, with a particular focus on the communicative function of embedded emails. This concept relates to a genre of email discourse, which embeds the meaning of a series of messages generated by different participants in response to the original email, hence the name ‘embedded emails’. This study uses discourse and genre analysis to examine how a geographically dispersed team of legal and business professionals in Europe exploited the dialogic nature of embedded emails to negotiate amendments to contracts pertaining to an international Merger & Acquisition (M&A) transaction in English. The findings of this study show that embedded emails facilitate transparent collaboration between the individual professionals, by enabling them to monitor the exchange of proposals and counter-proposals during the negotiation process. This documented ability to trace and participate in contract negotiation activities through intertextual chains of embedded email communication is a key feature of professional communicative competence.

CONSUMER’S CONTRACTUAL PROTECTION SCOPE IN EUROPEAN DIRECTIVE AND GEORGIA’S JUDICIAL SPACE

The article focusing on “Consumer’s contractual protection scope in European directive and Georgia’s judicial space” determines the consumer’s legal place in the contractual space, where both parties’ autonomy exists in the most effective way. It is the truth that expressing the will gives the consumer power to avoid exploitative arrangements, nevertheless, the “weaker party” is often deprived of the opportunity to get acquainted with every article of the agreement at the pre-contract negotiation stage. Moreover, the customer is often left with no choice but to join the contract. Precisely the government should balance the rights of weak and strong sides, it must protect citizens from unfair contractual terms. In 2014 Georgia took a big step towards European integration when it signed the Association Agreement. The 13th chapter obligates the country to protect and ensure the realization of consumer’s rights. In the article, we review specific EU directives with the comparative-legislative methods, that establish principal definitions of protection against unfair contractual terms to the countries. The article also contains directives about consumer rights and conceptual issues of the credit line directives. The article demonstrates the interpretation of the court of justice, the approach to national legislation and international practice, that will ultimately help the target group to understand and protect the principles of consumer rights. The presented article is a big step forward to strengthening the field of “consumer rights”.

Exploring a Quantitative and Qualitative Mixed Approach for Estimating Preliminary Engineering Efforts of Bridge Replacement Projects

While managing the transportation infrastructure, state transportation agencies (STAs) face multiple challenges. Primary among these are budgetary constraints and understaffing. One task that is impacted by these challenges is that of developing the plans, specifications, and estimates (PS&E) for construction projects. STAs often outsource this job to consultants. The outsourcing itself requires a contract negotiation process, which has historically relied on the work experience of the negotiation parties. PS&E budget development and management relies on an estimate of the engineering man-hours (EMHs). This paper presents a mixed approach to creating that estimate. To identify engineering-related tasks as variables in the estimation of EMHs for the development of PS&E, this approach uses qualitative analysis. The variables identified through qualitative analysis are used to build multiple linear regression models. Data used for this study include project characteristics from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and the respective work authorizations from 38 bridge replacement (BR) projects. The results revealed that variables identified through the qualitative analysis are statistically significant to estimate the EMHs of BR projects. However, the improvement in such estimation was found to be marginal. By developing a data-driven approach, this study provides an improved process for estimating EMHs for BR projects—an improvement over the commonly used experience-based approach. This incremental step contributes a method STA staff can use to make better-informed decisions during the contract negotiation process undertaken while outsourcing preliminary engineering (PE) work.