18 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Thursday 26 March 2020
We must act now to limit
the impact on war zones
After you published my March 13 letter
“What will happen if I try to fly home
to the US next week, as planned?”, I
followed US State Department
guidance and flew home from Tbilisi,
Georgia, arriving March 21. There were
multiple flight cancellations, but that
story is not nearly so important as the
opportunity we now have to limit the
pandemic’s worst impacts in war zones.
I urge all warring parties to heed this
week’s call by UN Secretary General
António Guterres for a global ceasefire.
There are precedents for ceasefires
that allow urgent medical care. US
president Jimmy Carter and The Carter
Center negotiated the six-month
Guinea worm ceasefire in 1995 to allow
concerted efforts towards Guinea
worm eradication in Sudan. Over the
years, Doctors Without
Borders/Médicins Sans Frontères
(MSF) have called for short-term
ceasefires for doctors and medical aid
to reach hospitals in Sierra Leone, the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Central
African Republic and so on.
Now is the time to scale up the
practice of ceasefires for medical care
with an unprecedented truly global
ceasefire. Winning a fight with a
pandemic while fighting a war is not
possible. We need to pause armed
conflict and devote ourselves to
preventing extensive mass casualties
from the pandemic. Mr Guterres’
leadership in calling for the global
ceasefire provides us a new way
forward as a human family.
Dr Susan H Allen
Director, Center for Peacemaking Practice,
School for Conflict Analysis and
Resolution,
George Mason University,
Arlington, VA 22201 USTurkey needs support
from Europe and Nato
Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign
minister, is right that Europe, in closing
its doors to refugees, has neglected to
uphold its humanitarian values — it is a
moral failure (“EU inaction on Syria is
a stain on human conscience”, March
23). His moralising tone may, however,
ring strangely to some in Europe.
Turkey’s decision to open the border
into Greece was a nakedly political
move, which made bargaining chips of
vulnerable refugees. Having prevented
the onward travel of millions of
refugees in Turkey since 2016, Mr
Cavusoglu’s protestations that Turkey
had no choice but to let them flee into
Greece carry little water.Nevertheless, despite Turkey’s
tactics, we should not lose sight of the
underlying validity in the foreign
minister’s argument. Turkey has
shouldered an immense refugee
burden as Europe turned its back on
the problem; it cannot be expected to
carry this economic and political load
indefinitely, particularly as the
situation in Idlib deteriorates further.
As many of my former constituents of
Turkish origin reminded me, we rarely
think of the Turkish-Syrian border as
the south-eastern boundary of Europe
and the Nato alliance. But doing so
makes Europe’s inaction on refugees
and Nato’s refusal to address the
problem at source in Syria all the more
puzzling. Turkey is a key strategic
partner for Europe and Nato: we must
start showing we value it.
As Covid-19 rages around the world,
refugees could be hit hardest by an
outbreak. Social distancing is a public
health tool simply not afforded to those
living in crowded camps. Lives are at
stake. Now more than ever, Turkey
needs our support in helping refugees.
Nick de Bois
Bishops Stortford, Herts, UK
MP for Enfield North 2010-Intelligent sharing
of data can save lives
Aside from the lack of intensive care
unit beds, ventilators and face masks,
today’s pandemic is also throwing in
sharp relief the lack of data sharing
infrastructure. Intelligent sharing of
smartphone location data could save
lives by tracing and testing the contacts
of confirmed Covid-19 cases.
Obstacles to data sharing are not just
technological. To collect data at scale
we need to respect individual rights to
privacy. We need bottom-up data
sharing structures. A bottom-up
structure is designed to empower
groups of people to pool together the
rights they have over their data, and
task a data intermediary with the
fiduciary exercise of those rights on
their behalf.
Such intermediaries would overcome
the ugly dilemma that stands in the
way of public good data sharing today.
Data intermediaries would be in a
position to monitor both the terms and
safeguards constraining such data
sharing: we should not have to choose
between the risk of further entrenching
surveillance on one hand and depriving
ourselves from much needed data-
dependent tools on the other hand.
But how should we trust the
intermediary? By giving data
intermediaries fiduciary
responsibilities through themechanism of trust law, these
intermediaries would become trustees
and together form a novel, much
needed profession for the 21st century.
Balancing our digital freedoms against
the public need for data is a nuanced,
and no less critical task than that of the
medical professionals on the front lines
of today’s pandemic.
Sylvie Delacroix
Fellow, The Alan Turing Institute
Professor in Law and Ethics,
Birmingham Law School, UK
Neil Lawrence
Senior AI Fellow, The Alan Turing
Institute
DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning,
University of Cambridge, UKIt’s time to make G20 the
global control tower again
Gideon Rachman aptly demonstrates
the epic failure in global governance
over the Covid-19 pandemic
(“Nationalism is a side effect of
coronavirus”, March 24). Indeed, it is
terribly unfortunate that there has
been no significant international
response, despite painfully obvious
dire “global” economic implications in
years to come.
Governments must now work
together to avert a possible global
recession and cushion the effects of
those who are affected by supply chain
disruptions. In this regard, the past
success of global co-ordination under
the auspices of G20 must be
summoned.
In the wake of the 2008 financial
crisis, born out of exigency, the G
emerged as a global control tower of
the crisis. The G20 nations collectively
devised and implemented a litany of
policy responses to the crisis. Aftersuccessfully halting the escalation of
the initial crisis, G20 nations declared
that “it worked.” Confronting the
current pandemic, G20 nations must
mobilise the previously vetted
governance mechanism to control and
mitigate damages from economic
fallouts on global supply chains. For
example, the G20 can persuade both
the US and China to declare a
moratorium on their current trade war
and restore the prewar tariff levels
until the crisis is over.
If the G20 again proves successful
this time, it will firmly establish itself
as a novel global governance body.
World leaders must not waste a good
crisis.
Sungjoon Cho
Professor of Law,
IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, USTargeted QE is required to
tackle the pandemic
The most important lines in Adair
Turner’s excellent op-ed (FT.com,
March 19) on the economic response to
the coronavirus crisis are these: “For
countries with national currencies,
central bank monetary financing of
temporarily increased fiscal deficits is a
feasible option. This would provide
strong stimulus without increasing the
public debt burden.”
Having served in government in the
1990s, I suspect that a major reason the
present government has been reluctant
to move to a full suppression strategy is
an understandable Treasury fear that
paying full compensation to the
businesses and individuals affected will
incur levels of public debt that could
cripple society when we eventually get
back to “peacetime” conditions. The
answer, as indicated by Lord Turner, is
that all public spending used to tackle
this crisis should be financed not by
public borrowing but by the Bank of
England. Quantitative easing was used
effectively in the financial crisis and
there was no inflationary consequence
because it was precisely targeted
(indeed the main worry until recently
was of a slump into deflation).
We need QE targeted specifically at
tackling the pandemic. All new
spending to tackle the crisis should be
channelled through a bespoke new
agency or board, with its money
coming from the Bank of England.
Until the funding nettle is grasped, the
danger is that the governments will
continue to drip feed its response
rather than going flat out in the way we
need.
Calum MacDonald
London W2, UK
MP for the Western Isles 1987-One of Katy Perry’s biggest hits, 2013’s
“Dark Horse”, has been salvaged from
the charge of plagiarism. Last year, a
US court ruled that it copied a
Christian rap song, “Joyful Noise”. Its
performer, a gospel-rapper who goes
by the stage name Flame, was
awarded $2.8m. But last week, the
verdict was overturned.
Flame plans to contest the decision.
Meanwhile, he and two co-songwriters
will get nothing. To paraphrase the
book of Job, the law giveth and the law
taketh away.
The basis for the claim was a simple
melody in both songs. Ms Perry’s legal
team didn’t contest the similarity.
They argued that Flame was “trying to
own the basic building blocks of
music”. The judge, Christina Snyder,
agreed. “A relatively common eight-
note combination of unprotected
elements that happens to be played in
a timbre common to a particular
genre of music cannot be so original as
to warrant copyright protection,” she
ruled. Translation: they’re generic pop
songs so they sound alike.
Plagiarism cases are two-a-penny in
the music industry. Where there’s a hit
there’s a writ, as the saying has it. Ed
Sheeran, for one, will be relieved by
Ms Perry’s successful appeal. A serial
target of copying allegations, he is
currently facing legal action over his
song “Thinking Out Loud”, which the
estate of Marvin Gaye alleges pinched
elements from “Let’s Get It On.” It is
claiming $100m in damages.
Mr Sheeran will be further
heartened by a case brought over LedZeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”. A US
appeal court ruled that Jimmy Page’s
famous guitar intro did not rip-off a
riff by psychedelic band Spirit.
That case also raised questions of
common musical property. Led
Zeppelin’s defence cited 300 years
of precedent for the riff’s sequence
of notes — dating it to days when
axe heroics meant hazardously
chopping down trees, not shredding
a Fender.
When Flame, real name Marcus
Tyrone Gray, won his now-reversed
victory against Ms Perry, there were
warnings of dire consequences for
creative expression. Comparisons
were made with a landmark US case
in 2015 involving the controversial
hit “Blurred Lines”. Its makers, Robin
Thicke and Pharrell Williams, were
judged to have copied the feel or
groove of a song by Marvin Gaye (him
again) — a looser definition of
plagiarism. His estate was awarded
$7.3m in damages, later cut to $5m.
The verdict was upheld in 2018.
The mixed messages from these
legal cases reflects a wider tension
between shared resources and private
property. Pop stars are a particularly
prominent register of this tension.
They like to label themselves “artists”
while operating in a ruthlessly
commercialised environment. Quick
to cite artistic liberty in support of
their work, they can be equally quick
to use legal means to protect it.
Taylor Swift trademarked her name in
2 007 and has since done the same for
a range of catchphrases in her lyrics,such as “this sick beat” and “party like
it’s 1989”. The US law professor
William McGeveran coined the word
“selfmarks” to describe the
personalising of trademark law.
Celebrity culture is its fuel, epitomised
by Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s applications to
trademark their children’s names as
though launching new brands.
Perhaps Ms Perry will do something
similar. She announced her pregnancy
this month: the big reveal came in a
promo video for her new single.
Meanwhile, she is being sued by
Australian fashion designer Katie
Taylor, who sells clothes under her
maiden name, Katie Perry.
Law is the principal forum for
negotiating disputes about ownership.
Perry v Perry is symbolic of the
endless to-and-fro of cases. But a new
piece of music technology aims to
resolve the argument, for songwriters
at least. A software programme called
All the Music was launched this year
in the US. Its algorithm has created
68bn eight-note melodies, such as the
one shared by Ms Perry’s “Dark
Horse” and Flame’s “Joyful Noise” —
all have been released into the public
domain for anyone to use.
The intention is to provide tunes we
can all sing along to, shared building
blocks from which to construct the
private property of a song. It may also
generate a more cacophonous sound
— the wailing and gnashing of teeth by
music lawyers as the plagiarism cases
dry up.The writer is the FT’s pop music criticPlagiarism
lawyers are
dancing to a
new tune
Notebook
by Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Your article “Coronavirus may have
infected half of UK population —
Oxford study” (FT.com, March 24)
reports conclusions of a modelling
study. Having read the study, we have
major concerns.
This figure is based on an
assumption for which the authors offer
no empirical justification. This is that
only one in 1,000 infections will need
hospitalisation. Yet more than one in
1,000 people have already been
hospitalised in the Lombardy region of
Italy, despite stringent control
measures being implemented
(population of Lombardy: 10,060,574;
hospitalised: 10,905; hospitalisationrate per 1,000 population: 1.08; deaths:
4,178; deaths per 1,000 population:
0.42; data updated to 5pm March 24).
Our Italian colleagues professors
Walter Ricciardi and Anna Odone have
data indicating much higher rates in
some towns in Lombardy.
We are also concerned that the
study paper included a contact for
press inquiries even before it was peer
reviewed, or even checked against the
Italian hospitalisation and death data.
While the authors’ intention may have
been to highlight the need for the
serological antibody test for Covid-
infection that we agree is needed now,
we are concerned that thesensationalist media headlines the
paper is generating have dangerous
implications.
First, if it is believed, then it
threatens control efforts everywhere,
as people will think they have probably
already had it. Second, politicians are
desperate for the current situation not
to be as bad as it appears and to be able
to relax what we believe are the
minimum restrictions necessary.
Tim Colbourn
Associate Professor of Global Health
Epidemiology and Evaluation, UCL
Institute for Global Health, London, UK
Anna Odone
Associate Professor of Public Health,University Vita-Salute San Raffaele,
Milan, Italy
Walter Ricciardi
Professor of Hygiene and Public Health,
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore,
Roma, Italy
Elio Riboli
Professor in Cancer Epidemiology and
Prevention, School of Public Health,
Imperial College London, UK
Nisreen Alwan
Associate Professor in Public Health,
University of Southampton, UK
Martin McKee
Professor of European Public Health,
London School of Hygiene & Tropical
MedicineThe Oxford study figure has no empirical justification
Letters
T H U R S DAY 2 6 M A R C H 2 0 2 0Email:[email protected]
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to the FT Editorial Complaints Commissioner: [email protected]‘Go away’Under pressure to fill in the gaps in his
plans to support workers through the
virus outbreak, Britain’s Chancellor
Rishi Sunak will today unveil help for
the self-employed. He is not alone in
searching for ways to aid those in pre-
carious work. Across the developed
world, governments are struggling to
adapt welfare states to protect the
ranks of gig economy workers. Social
benefit schemes designed for an era of
stable mass employment are not up to
the task of coping with the pandemic.
One-sided flexibility in labour mar-
kets, which allows companies to hire
and fire at will, may promote dyna-
mism during economic good times but
puts all the risk on to workers. Amid
the disruption of Covid-19, there is little
protection for self-employed and gig
economy workers whose incomes have
disappeared as they are forced stay at
home in the interest of public health.
The countries that have reacted best
so far are those that already have the
most sophisticated welfare systems.
Norway has guaranteed 80 per cent of
self-employed workers’ average
incomes, based on tax returns over the
past three years. Denmark has guaran-
teed 75 per cent. The Scandinavian
“flexicurity” model that combines
dynamism with protection is, once
again, a model.
Other countries, such as the UK,
must play catch-up. Mr Sunak is said to
be looking at a similar scheme for sub-
sidising self-employed incomes. Get-
ting these systems up and running will
take time and is administratively diffi-
cult. Even existing processes are under
pressure. Almost 500,000 people have
applied for Britain’s universal credit
system, which provides income sup-
port to low-paid workers, over the past
nine days; the Department for Work
and Pensions has had to move thou-
sands of workers and draft in more
to help process the backlog.
Some governments are using ad hoc
payments. In the US, the stimulus
package agreed by Congress includes
only a one-off payment of $1,200 for
the self-employed who, ordinarily, do
not qualify for unemployment bene-
fits. Germany, where precarious mini-
jobs have proliferated since the labour
market reforms of the early 2000s, is
offering grants of up €15,000 to the
self-employed and freelancers over the
next three months.
Applications and transfers will take
time, even once the systems are up and
running. Still, credible promises are
essential. Uncertainty is debilitating
and the self-employed can use these
guarantees to help secure credit to tide
them over for the intervening period.
Companies, too, must think before
they act. Coronavirus has been a stark
reminder of the class inequalities in the
gig economy: Uber, for example, is
encouraging its salaried employees to
work from home while drivers are told
to keep working unless infected.
For countries that cannot follow the
Norwegian model, the simplest and
most effective measure will be an
unconditional temporary basic
income. This could be sent to all regis-
tered adults for the duration of the
lockdown. Otherwise, no lockdown
will last: people will not stay at home if
it means starvation and homelessness.
The money can be taxable and claimed
back once work resumes.
Flexibility is here to stay. When the
crisis abates the ability to hire easily
will be vital. Even today, drivers and
retail staff are in high demand, provid-
ing some jobs growth as others are laid
off. Yet reform is urgently needed.
Many in secure employment are being
made more aware of those they depend
on. That will increase demands for per-
manent changes to ensure gig workers
are properly protected. For now, gov-
ernments must extend support to all.Coronavirus disruption exposes the gaps in the welfare system
How to aid gig workers
through the pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic is the big-
gest economic shock to hit the EU since
its foundation in 1957. Some member
states will suffer more deeply than oth-
ers, but none will escape unharmed.
This is truly a common shock, and one
that is nobody’s fault. Failure to show
solidarity in helping those less able to
respond risks doing immeasurable
harm to the European project.
Supporting the EU economy through
a necessary suspension of activity
requires an immense fiscal effort. It is a
particular challenge in the eurozone,
where the strength of members’ public
finances varies widely; some already
have debt to GDP ratios of 100 per cent
or more. Even the most stretched
should be able to borrow the additional
10-20 per cent of GDP the economic
fallout necessitates, provided borrow-
ing costs stay low. The danger is that
investors take fright and set off the self-
fulfilling spiral into default.
The ECB’s pledge last week to buy
another €750bn of bonds this year has
helped, containing bond spreads that
had started to widen. But financial
markets’ concern about the limits to
what the ECB can do have not entirely
dissipated. The eurozone must prove
definitively it can deliver the fiscal pol-
icy response this disaster calls for.
Leaders of France, Italy, Spain and
six other countries called yesterday for
the radical step of creating a dedicated
mutualised debt instrument, or “coro-
nabond”, to finance capitals’ spending
on health and economic support meas-
ures. Such a bond would be the most
potent way to dispel doubts that not
just the ECB but eurozone govern-
ments will do whatever is needed.
As well as delivering the necessary
unified European response, it would
tap the full fiscal potential of the Euro-
zone. It would also be a powerful dis-
play of solidarity. Given the risk of an
anti-euro backlash in some countries,
the political message could prove as
important for the eurozone’s survival
as taking the right economic steps.
Yet strong resistance from Germany,
the Netherlands and Austria, where
debt mutualisation is anathema,
means the bloc is unlikely to embrace
coronabonds for now. Nobody has
come up with a precise plan to imple-
ment them. Opinion in northern Euro-
pean countries, where coronabonds
risk promoting Eurosceptic national-
ism, will need time to accept that they
have as much to lose from a eurozone
break-up as their southern partners.
That is no reason to drop the idea.
But eurozone leaders should in the
meantime use a tool they already have:
the bloc’s rescue fund. The European
Stability Mechanism still has €410bn
of remaining financing capacity — size-
able, if not inexhaustible. Most impor-
tantly, lining countries up for ESM
funding leaves the ECB free to unleash
unlimited purchases of its bonds, the
substance behind Mario Draghi’s 2012
pledge to do “whatever it takes”.
Going to the ESM, however, carries a
stigma, especially in Italy, where Euro-
sceptic opposition parties have spread
lies that ESM loans would mean harsh
austerity and restructuring of Italian
debt. While the rationale for strict con-
ditionality when the ESM was set up
was clear, it does not apply to the Cov-
id-19 crisis. ESM access should be made
as straightforward as possible.
The best approach would be to issue
an ESM credit line to every eurozone
government, dispensing with any
application process, with ultra-long
repayment terms and conditions lim-
ited to the funds being spent on imme-
diate crisis-related measures. This
would let markets know the ECB can
use all its firepower when needed. That
in turn would give the best chance that
no country would ever need to tap into
the credit line in the first place.‘Coronabonds’ are a good idea, but the bloc can tap its rescue fund
Eurozone leaders should
use their existing tools
MARCH 26 2020 Section:Features Time: 25/3/2020 - 18: 56 User: alistair.hayes Page Name: LEADER USA, Part,Page,Edition: EUR, 18, 1