Miscellaneous Supplement 1 - Michigan 2024 HHIRS

Notes are under the hat (F5) header
Email me with questions at geographyandnewsnerd@gmail.com. Go Fight Win! – June.
AT---CFMP Hidden Kant Aff
1NC---T Violation
Strengthen protection means helping the rights owner---topical affs must make IP easier to acquire, broaden its scope, or provide remedies for infringement.
Mandel ’18 [Gregory N.; January; Dean & Peter J. Liacouras Professor of Law, Temple University; Minnesota Law Review, “Institutional Fracture in Intellectual Property Law: The Supreme Court Versus Congress,” 102:803]
I constructed a database of every Supreme Court opinion implicating patent, copyright, trademark, or trade secret issues from July 1, 2002 through June 30, 2016. The database entries are the Supreme Court’s final decision in each matter; certiorari dispositions are not included. I removed from the database any cases that, though referring to intellectual property law, did not actually decide any intellectual property issue. For example, Illinois Tool Works, Inc. v. Independent Ink, Inc. concerned whether there should be a presumption of market power under antitrust law where the product in question is subject to patent protection.7 Though this case bears a relation to patent protection, its result did not turn on or affect patent law. The final Supreme Court database includes forty-four intellectual property decisions and is summarized in Appendix A. Using similar methods, I developed a database of every federal statute concerning patent, copyright, trademark, or trade secret rights during the same time period. As with the Supreme Court data, I removed statutes that did not actually affect patent, copyright, trademark, or trade secret doctrine. For example, the Lanham Act is the primary statute providing for Federal trademark protection in the United States.8 Portions of the Lanham Act regulate nontrademark activities, such as false advertising.9 Legislation that affected only the false advertising portions of the Lanham Act was excluded from the database. The final dataset includes forty-three legislative entries for the pertinent period and is summarized in Appendix B.10 The following sections analyze the contours of intellectual property activity in these Supreme Court and congressional datasets.
A. SUPREME COURT DECISIONS
The primary variable for analysis is whether a given Supreme Court decision or legislative action strengthened or weakened intellectual property protection. Consistent with prior research in this context, strengthened versus weakened refers to the extent of protection afforded to the intellectual property rights owner.11 Accordingly, Supreme Court decisions that make it easier to acquire intellectual property rights; broaden the scope of intellectual property protection; make it easier to prove infringement; or strengthen remedies for infringement are all considered to strengthen intellectual property protection. Decisions that have the opposite effects weaken protection.12
Aff is not just untopical, it’s antitopical! It weakens copyright protections.
Barron 12 [BARRON, ANNE. “KANT, COPYRIGHT AND COMMUNICATIVE FREEDOM.” Law and Philosophy 31, no. 1 (2012): 1–48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41348265.] Recut by NTJJ.
An appropriate starting point here is Abraham Drassinower's claim that the normative heart of copyright law resides, not in the right to control unauthorized copying as such, but in what he calls the right of public presentation: an author's exclusive right to address the public, in his or her own words, in the form of a work.123 Copyright law, Drassinower argues, necessarily takes authorial activity to be an in stance of speech. All of its central categories - including in particular the exclusive rights of the author and the major defenses available to users of copyright material - should, he argues, be (re-) interpreted in relation to a conceptualization of works of authorship as communications to the public.124 This would limit the current scope of copy right protection, because when re-interpreted in this way, not every act of copying can properly be regarded as infringing. Only repro ductions of the work qua communicative act - or reproductions which are 'in the service of public presentation'125 - are normatively relevant; copies which are reproductions only 'in the physical sense'126 are not. Copies made for personal use would fall into the second category, as would copies technically incidental to the reception of the work, such as cache copies or digital copies made while browsing online. More over, to reproduce another's work as a work (i.e. to repeat the communicative act represented by the work) is - properly construed - not simply to re-communicate another's work, but to 'wrongfully place [one]self in another's position as an author'.127 What Drassinower has in mind here, evidently, is any adoption of another's communicative act as one's own, and in a way which also involves its public presentation. There is no such adoption where A independently creates and communicates a work that coincidentally bears a similarity to a pre existing work authored by B: the similarity, rightly in Drassinower's view, does not constitute a basis for finding A liable to B. There should equally be no liability, in his view, if A's use of the earlier work, though deliberate, is reasonably necessary for his or her own exercise of authorship,128 for in such a case A is addressing the public on his or her own account. (It is this interpretation of the wrong involved in copyright infringement that grounds Drassinower's arguments, noted in the Introduction above, about the legal position of transformative re-users of copyright material.) Aspects of copyright law, Drassinower argues, already recognize this fundamental reciprocity between actual and potential future authors. One example is the so-called idea /expression dichotomy: the principle that where one author has not copied another author's expression but has instead expressed the latter's idea anew, s /he has shown independent authorship and cannot be impugned for tres passing on another's authorship.129 Another example is the defense available for using a work as part of an exercise in criticism or review of that work. However other aspects of the current law - including many of those yielded by its recent expansionary tendencies - fail to acknowledge the equal authorial freedom of addressees. To remedy this, Drassinower suggests that at least some defences and exceptions to copyright protection - the vast majority of which currently give rise to nothing more than user 'privileges' and as such are vulnerable to being overridden by digital rights management systems and the contractual ordering of user privileges that these enable - should be placed on a firmer legal foundation by being characterised as user 'rights'.130 The fundamental user right, he suggests, is the right to engage with (as opposed to merely repeating), and respond publicly to, works of authorship in ways that reasonably require the use of those works. This is as integral to copyright law as the authorial right of public presentation, because it too protects authorial freedom. 'Equality, then, is the category that would make intelligible the connection between author rights and user rights as aspects of the copyright system'.131 The domain protected by copyright and the public domain (i.e. the reservoir of intellectual materials that may be freely drawn upon in authorial activity) must thus be seen as two moments of a single integrated structure oriented towards guaran teeing equal authorial freedom for all.
Strengthening IPR requires making protection stronger for the rights owner---it excludes making IPR more socially beneficial.
Mandel ’18 [Gregory N.; January; Dean & Peter J. Liacouras Professor of Law, Temple University; Minnesota Law Review, “Institutional Fracture in Intellectual Property Law: The Supreme Court Versus Congress,” 102:803]
Recent legislative and judicial actions concerning intellectual property law reveal several stark trends. Congress has been remarkably hospitable to stronger intellectual property rights. Congress passed forty-three intellectual property laws during the time period in question. Of those that affected the substantive strength of intellectual property rights, over 80% made rights stronger.1 These laws made it easier to acquire intellectual property rights, broadened the scope of protection, and strengthened enforcement. The Supreme Court’s intellectual property jurisprudence, however, has moved largely in the opposite direction. The Court decided forty-four intellectual property cases from the October 2002–2003 Term through the October 2015–2016 Term, and of those that substantively affected the extent of rights, two-thirds weakened protection.
Footnote 1
1. The use of the terms “stronger” and “weaker” refers solely to the strength (or weakness) of intellectual property rights from the perspective of the intellectual property rights owner. These terms do not indicate that a given law is more or less socially beneficial.
Voting issue for limits and ground---they expand the topic to include a litany of undebateable affs, like first-to-invent, anti-topical balancing tests, and other process reforms. That overstretches the negative research burden and undermines preparedness for all debates.
AT---CFMP Impact Work
AT: Graphene
AT: Graphene---Top
No graphene impact---best studies.
OpenMind BBVA, 24, non-profit project run by BBVA that aims to contribute to the generation and dissemination of knowledge about fundamental issues of our time, in an open and free way, "Graphene, Pollutant of the Future? ☠️", OpenMind, 4-25-2024, https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/scientific-insights/graphene-pollutant-of-the-future/. Accessed 7-27-2024 by NT-JJ.
However, the first clinical trial to study acute cardiopulmonary responses to graphene inhalation, published in 2024, concludes that “graphene oxide nanosheet exposure was well tolerated with no adverse effects” on heart rate, blood pressure, lung function and inflammatory markers, regardless of particle size. The study is the culmination of a decade of research on mice and human tissues, but the researchers warn that the results are still preliminary. A slight increase in blood clotting was detected in a laboratory arterial model. Moreover, this is only a short-term trial, and the environmental transformation of graphene nanomaterials is still an unknown.
AT: Graphene---Nelson
The impact is zero.
[1AC/1NC/2AC/2NC] Nelson ’24 [David Nelson, PhD Researcher, Entrepreneur and Software Engineer; January 13, 2024; “Pollutant Existential Risks,” https://medium.com/@david.nelson1_80288/pollutant-existential-risks-368844d243d5] Recut by NTJJ.
<<<AFTER CUTTING ENDS>>>
I think micro-fragmented graphene won’t be that dangerous because the edges of the graphene will oxidise losing most of its amazing properties in the process and we have been producing a lot of oxidised and fragmented graphene for a while and people haven’t been showing up in hospitals because of it.
AT: Ice Age Warming Good
AT: Ice Age [Munroe]
It’s not coming---green.
1NC Munroe ’22 [Randall; September 7; independent science author and researcher, former NASA employee, BS in Physics from Christopher Newport University, “What if we entered a new Ice Age?” What If, https://whatifshow.com/what-if-we-entered-a-new-ice-age/] Recut by NTJJ.
Earth has gone through at least five major ice ages in its history. And you better start adapting now. Because another ice age is about to begin. Hypothetically. How would a new ice age change Earth as we know it? What could you do to survive on a frozen planet? And how are we already delaying another ice age?
During all ice ages in Earth’s history, global temperatures dropped well below freezing across the planet. And it wasn’t just a few icy trips around the Sun. Earth can take hundreds of millions of years to thaw out. The most recent ice age started the Quartenary period about 2.6 million years ago. And technically, we’re still in it today.
Ice ages have the power to radically change our planet. They reshape landscapes. They create new lakes and rivers. Plants and animals cling to life, either adapting or facing extinction. So, if a new ice age began today, how soon would our civilization collapse into chilly chaos?
Our sixth major ice age would be a few thousand years in the making. And it would begin with Earth’s tilt on its axis going through its cycle of changes. An unstable tilt plus a little wobble in our orbit around the Sun, and there would be less and less solar radiation reaching the planet. You’d see the first effects of this on the Northern Hemisphere.
AT: Ice Age [Zharakova/Koryagin]
No solar cooling.
NASA 20, NASA Science Editorial Team, 2020, it’s the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, responsible for monitoring the sun and probably knows more than random Russian scientists in a press release, "There Is No Impending 'Mini Ice Age'", NASA.gov, 02-13-2020, https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/there-is-no-impending-mini-ice-age/. Accessed 7-27-2024 by NT-JJ.
Are We Headed for a ‘Grand Solar Minimum’? (And Will It Slow Down Global Warming?)
As mentioned, the Sun is currently experiencing a lower level of sunspot activity. Some scientists speculate that this may be the beginning of a Grand Solar Minimum — a decades-to-centuries-long period of low solar activity — while others say there is insufficient evidence to support that position. During a grand minimum, solar magnetism diminishes, sunspots appear infrequently and less ultraviolet radiation reaches Earth.
The largest recent event -- the “Maunder Minimum,” which lasted from 1645 and 1715 — overlapped with the “Little Ice Age” (13th to mid-19th century). While scientists continue to research whether an extended solar minimum could have contributed to cooling the climate, there is little evidence that the Maunder Minimum sparked the Little Ice Age, or at least not entirely by itself (notably, the Little Ice Age began before the Maunder Minimum). Current theories on what caused the Little Ice Age consider that a variety of events could have contributed, with natural fluctuations in ocean circulation, changes in land use by humans and cooling from a less active sun also playing roles; overall, cooling caused by volcanic aerosols likely played the title role.
Several studies in recent years have looked at the effects that another Grand Solar Minimum might have on global surface temperatures. These studies have suggested that while a grand minimum might cool the planet as much as 0.3 degrees C, this would, at best, slow down but not reverse human-caused global warming. There would be a small decline of energy reaching Earth; however, just three years of current carbon dioxide concentration growth would make up for it. In addition, the Grand Solar Minimum would be modest and temporary, with global temperatures quickly rebounding once the event concluded.
Moreover, even a prolonged Grand Solar Minimum or Maunder Minimum would only briefly and minimally offset human-caused warming.
AT: Ice Age [Kramer]
It’s inevitable AND unproven.
[1NC/2NC/1NR] Kramer ’14 [Sarah; 2014; MS in Journalism from the Medill School at Northwestern University, BA in from The University of British Columbia; Climate Change at Medill, “Climate Change May Be Stalling Overdue Ice Age,” https://climatechange.medill.northwestern.edu/2015/01/29/climate-change-may-be-stalling-overdue-ice-age/] Recut by NTJJ.
<<<AFTER THEIR CUTTING ENDS>>>
Hall emphasized that this hypothesis hasn’t been proven but it is one possible effect of humanity’s massive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the last two centuries.
“Eventually, the Earth will do what the Earth wants to do,” Hall said. “If it’s scheduled to go into an ice age it eventually will. But it might be delayed” due to warming temperatures.
AT: REMs
I cut these cards last year but idk if they got put out at camp.
2AC---AT: REMs
No impact to REMs---stockpiles and prioritization.
Jeremy Hsu 19, BA in Sociology and tech journalist for since 2008, "Don’t Panic about Rare Earth Elements", Scientific American, 5-31-2019. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dont-panic-about-rare-earth-elements/. Accessed 7-17-2023 by NT-JJ
China currently has most of the world's separation facilities—but if it ever were to stop exporting the purified materials, other options exist. In the short term, U.S. companies that rely on these minerals would likely have inventory stockpiles for brief supply shortages, Gholz says, who served from 2010 to 2012 as senior advisor to the Pentagon's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy. To stretch those stockpiles out, the overall market could prioritize rare earth elements for crucial applications such as military and medical technologies, while forcing makers of headphones or golf bags to pay more. "I don't think there is an obvious supply gap or hole where someone will not be able to get a Prius or Tesla or whatever they're looking at," Gholz says.
1AR---AT: REMS
Alternative production and recycling solves – their cards don’t assume new facilities
Jeremy Hsu, BA in Sociology and tech journalist for since 2008, "Don’t Panic about Rare Earth Elements", Scientific American, 5-31-2019. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dont-panic-about-rare-earth-elements/. Accessed 7-17-2023 by NT-JJ
In the event of a longer Chinese supply interruption, the U.S. rare earths mine at Mountain Pass, Calif., would likely become the first place to step up production, Gholz explains. The mine's previous owner, Molycorp, spent approximately $1.5 billion building a new separation facility for producing rare earth concentrates. It did not, however, complete the downstream processing needed to produce purified rare earth materials before the company went bankrupt in 2015 because of Chinese competition. The mine's new owner, MP Materials, plans to reactivate and complete the mothballed facility for fresh operation starting in 2020.
Another alternative is Australian company Lynas Corp., the world's only significant rare earths producer outside China. It currently operates a mine at Mount Weld in Australia, and sends ores to a separation facility in Malaysia that can purify the rare earth materials—but a complication has arisen from the fact that some ores contain radioactive thorium. Environmental concerns about low-level radioactive waste from the separation facility recently led Lynas to announce it will move some some of the "upstream" processing (which involves the radioactivity) back to Australia, while keeping "downstream" processing in Malaysia. The company has also announced it will work with Texas-based Blue Line Corp. to build a new separation facility in the U.S. for operations starting in 2022 at the earliest.
Beyond existing mines, companies that dig for other resources might start extracting rare earth elements from deposits of different materials. For example, the U.S. could someday obtain these elements as byproducts from power plant coal ash and coal mining waste. And radioactive material mixed in with ores could end up being positive: If thorium-based nuclear plants prove viable, expanded thorium mining would also turn up usable rare earth minerals. Researchers have even begun investigating a large concentration of rare earth elements in deep-sea mud from an ocean floor deposit near Japan.
We can always ramp up domestic production---we have uncapitalized reserves---we’ll insert a chart.
Jeremy Hsu, BA in Sociology and tech journalist for since 2008, "Don’t Panic about Rare Earth Elements", Scientific American, 5-31-2019. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dont-panic-about-rare-earth-elements/. Accessed 7-17-2023 by NT-JJ
AT: Spark Defense
All of these were taken verbatim from 2023 Umich AT: Spark. I cut none 

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