At the core of regulating cumulative environmental impacts is understanding and articulating what and who we want to protect or restore from conditions of unacceptable cumulative harm. This central thing being protected or restored is the "matter of concern." Rules have an important role to play in articulating and formalizing the matter of concern. This chapter begins by analyzing how matters of concern vary, from an individual species, to a sacred site, to environmental justice, and how this variation affects how difficult it is to conceptualize the matter of concern. Addressing cumulative environmental problems requires rules to help in conceptualization by providing for articulating the environmental and human aspects of the matter of concern; describing its spatial boundaries; specifying cumulative threshold conditions, any further change from which would be unacceptable; and providing for adapting these things while avoiding "shifting baselines" that mask cumulative harm.

This final chapter ties together the lessons gleaned from the preceding analyses of statutory and contractual reversion models to present broad principles for lawmakers to apply when considering implementing reversion mechanisms in their jurisdictions. These principles are pitched at a suitably abstract level, cognisant of the different issues faced across different creative markets and jurisdictions. They cover elements like protecting reversion mechanisms against subversion by rightsholders and ensuring reversion mechanisms are industry specific. We close the chapter, and the book, with a provocation as to what an effective reversion system might look like, drawn from Giblin’s prior work in ‘A New Copyright Bargain’ (2018).

Post-genocide Rwanda serves as a case of strong institutional control in which the government engages transitional justice through a strategy of coercion. In this chapter I explore the Rwandan government’s response to international pressure for accountability. To advance government impunity, the government adopts a strategy of coercion, wherein a new transitional justice institution, gacaca, is implemented but subsequently monitored and controlled to advance state impunity and consolidate RPF control. The chapter begins with an overview of armed conflict in Rwanda with particular attention on the complexities of the violence experienced by individuals during the civil war, genocide, and at the hands of the RPF. I then discuss the government’s strategic adaptation of transitional justice to identify and evaluate the coercive strategy in which claims for government accountability are monitored and controlled. I explore the strategy of coercion in practice through an in-depth analysis of gacaca, which has aggressively pursued crimes of genocide while ignoring RPF abuses. To explore the coercion strategy beyond the case of Rwanda, I examine transitional justice in Burundi.

Northern Ireland typifies a highly constrained government. In this case, institutional constraints on the British government lead to a strategy of concession in which transition justice is offered to appease the demands of strong domestic constituencies without a genuine attempt to reckon with past wrongdoings by the British state. By engaging transitional justice for some emblematic cases and not others, the government further propagates the sectarian divisions that legitimate British control. The chapter begins with a discussion of the conflict in Northern Ireland and outlines the wrongdoings committed by the British state. I then evaluate the concessionary strategy that accommodates only certain demands for state accountability. Next is an evaluation of that strategy in practice through a focus on public inquiries and the Historical Enquiries Team. These mechanisms showcase the way certain events and experiences have been thoroughly investigated and adjudicated while other incidents have been obstructed or ignored. To explore the strategy beyond Northern Ireland, I examine transitional justice in the Central African Republic.

Chapter 7 turns to work in crafts and construction, an area of the economy that displayed much sharper distinctions between men’s and women’s work. It explores the role of apprenticeship in creating these gendered patterns before looking at one male-dominated work area, building and construction, and two in which women were often employed, textile and clothing production. Despite the absence of guilds in the great majority of localities providing evidence, the requirement of apprenticeship in many craft occupations effectively excluded women from those areas of work. Yet women’s skilled work in some areas of textile and clothing production, alongside the contributions of non-craftsmen in construction, suggest that specialisation through apprenticeship was just as much about status and prestige, as it was about skill acquisition.

This chapter examines how copyright’s bargain is broken when compared against its incentive and rewards rationales. Copyright grants far exceed what is necessary to incentivise initial production and ongoing investments, and the rewards from creative labour do not filter down to the creators copyright was designed to protect. It then shows how reverting copyright to creators after it has been assigned or licensed, mainly through legal mechanisms, can help address these problems, before examining some of the main arguments against reversion rights (e.g. that it unduly imposes upon the freedom of parties to enter into contractual relationships).