#and for the legal cases to set up better regulations on how companies treat users | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

1stnewslink · 4 years ago

Text

Cryptocurrency Experts Say These 4 Factors Are Driving Change In The Industry – Crunchbase News

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital currencies like Bitcoin and the underlying blockchain technologies that power them. And while Bitcoin’s volatility continues – with the currency hitting its lowest level in months this week – investors are optimistic that the momentum will continue even as the world slowly returns to normal.

Subscribe to the Crunchbase daily

The crypto and blockchain sector has attracted nearly $ 12.4 billion in venture investments in U.S. companies and $ 19.4 billion globally since 2017, according to Crunchbase numbers. In fact, data so far for 2021 shows that the dollars for both global and US investments were nearly three times as high as in 2020. But the sector continues to face ongoing opportunities and challenges, including wider adoption and new regulatory pressures from governments around the world.

Case in point: At the beginning of this month, El Salvador became the first country in the world to introduce Bitcoin as legal tender. At the same time, the Thai Securities and Exchange Commission ordered its exchanges to delist meme coins such as Dogecoin as well as NFTs, exchange tokens and fan tokens, saying these tokens had “no clear target or substance or underlying”. [value]. “

Increased efforts by the Chinese government to contain the crypto space had the biggest impact on ratings. On Friday, authorities in China’s Sichuan province, one of the country’s largest mining centers, reportedly ordered cryptocurrency miners to cease operations.

Cryptocurrency experts say these types of polarizing events put the spotlight on the room.

“Blockchain was accelerated for five years during the pandemic,” says Alon Goren, founding partner of the blockchain fintech venture studio Draper Goren Holm.

Here’s a closer look at four factors that are likely to make big changes in the cryptocurrency space in the years to come.

1) Mainstream adoption

Cryptocurrency startups are working to simplify the process of using, buying, trading, and finding digital currencies, thereby increasing consumer awareness and adoption.

According to Goren, mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies is increasingly “insanely important” to the growth of the sector. Part of this assumption, however, is due to less serious uses of digital currencies, including “meme coins” – assets based on jokes but with no real value other than those given by social indicators – a phenomenon that too Goren is concerned because it reinforces the notion that cryptocurrency is illegitimate.

“Publicly traded companies have quarterly earnings, you can follow the CEO on Twitter and get their opinion on things,” added Goren. “In crypto you don’t have things like that to show legitimacy.”

Meanwhile, Portto / Blocto CEO Hsuan Lee said the adoption of NFTs – non-fungible tokens – is one of the biggest factors that changed the industry over the past year. Portto is a Taiwan-based company dedicated to making blockchain easy for users and developers.

While NFTs have been around since 2017, they weren’t initially attractive for typical use, but that changed when they became available to retail investors, including when sports organizations got involved in selling digital clips and maps, he said.

“The National Basketball Association doesn’t market itself as a blockchain, but offering collectibles appeals to fans,” Lee said in an interview. “In such applications, even the introduction of a music NFT would potentially attract existing music fans. When these types of people join the party, crypto becomes more mainstream. “

Muneeb Jan, a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency and fintech expert, said the investor base for cryptocurrencies is still largely retail investors, while large financial institutions are in the discovery phase.

Still, new companies announce daily that they will accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and banks are facing demand from crypto investors to get more involved in this area, Jan.

“Crypto funds are increasingly seen as an asset class,” he said in an interview. “There is currently no major use case, but they want to jump on the bandwagon. If more large institutional investors are added, there will be price stability and legitimacy will improve. “

2) price volatility

Jan believes that two of the biggest headwinds slowing mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies are price volatility and the fact that Bitcoin is not fully viable as a means of payment due to the current inability to process transactions quickly.

Bitcoin has been particularly volatile in the past few days. After rising above $ 40,000 about a week ago, the currency fell below $ 30,000 this week and rebounded to around $ 32,400 on Tuesday afternoon. Last year, the price soared to a high of more than $ 60,000 before dropping in half in late May.

Just processing transactions isn’t a sustainable benefit in the long run due to the expensive transaction fees involved, although people want Bitcoin to be able to do it, he added.

“Other cryptocurrencies are not volatile because the community that invests in them agrees on the price,” said Jan.

Lee said that price volatility is being supported by regulations, especially as the cryptocurrency becomes more widely adopted. Price volatility will only be resolved over time, he said.

“This is a very young market and it has attracted attention which makes prices volatile,” he added. “It can be dangerous to get into a room without a set of rules. There is a lot of imagination for these cryptocurrencies at an early stage. At the same time, bad news can easily fall harder on crypto than other companies. “

3) pressure to regulate

The proposed regulations for cryptocurrencies have gained momentum since early 2021.

Including: The Treasury Department announced in May that any transfer of $ 10,000 or more must be reported to the Internal Revenue Service in order to curb tax evasion.

“I’m excited to see regulations in place because they will be good for the industry overall,” said Lee. “It will minimize potential scams or malicious use cases and make it better for everyone to get on board.”

The government is also reviewing possible regulations on cryptocurrency exchanges, with an emphasis on protecting investors and preventing market manipulation, as well as financial account reporting in relation to cryptocurrency accounts and payment service accounts that accept cryptocurrencies.

Goren called a focus on Bitcoin, Etherium and the public markets “a double-edged sword”. Any real value is eroded when inflation occurs, but Bitcoin is a decentralized currency so its value can withstand inflation well.

And the more institutions that get involved, the more legitimacy it creates so regulators are less likely to fight it, he said.

“Most lawmakers know that crypto isn’t used by criminals, but the people who put it in office are big financial institutions who cheer when they say this is happening,” Goren said.

While he understands why there must be IRS reporting requirements for tax purposes, he disagrees when government regulations don’t treat Bitcoin as a currency but treat it like cash.

By treating the cryptocurrency as an investment instead, the IRS is taxing capital gains, which could also have an impact on the venture capital world, he added.

Goren said other countries have a little more clarity, but there is still misunderstanding in the US when it comes to how cryptocurrencies should be reported financially and it won’t change until there is a clear categorization of cryptocurrencies.

4) Beyond Bitcoin

Rocketfuel Blockchain founder Peter Jensen said it will take time for the public to understand and become familiar with cryptocurrency, just as people previously had to get used to the idea of online banking and ATM cards.

Jensen’s San Francisco-based company processes crypto payments. He believes people are being distracted by the price volatility of Bitcoin, even though it is only one of around 200 cryptocurrencies.

“We have to move people’s minds away from Bitcoin, because who knows if the cryptocurrency will survive,” Jensen said in an interview. “There are many cryptocurrencies that are pegged to the dollar, which means that they have no volatility. If you take this and use it for payment, you benefit from it. “

Global developments – like the introduction of cryptocurrency in El Salvador and the issuance of their own digital currencies by Sweden and Dubai – promise the future of the industry, and Jensen predicts that the US will eventually issue a digital version of the dollar.

He sees a world where if you get a job you have the choice of getting your paycheck in dollars or in cryptocurrency and there will be no volatility as these funds are guaranteed by the U.S. government.

“We believe the US has a chance to stay ahead, even though China is adopting cryptocurrencies and those with less efficient banking systems faster,” added Jensen. “If we don’t stay ahead, we’ll be last.”

Crunchbase Pro queries listed for this article

The query used for this article was “Global Cryptocurrency Companies”, where “Bitcoin”, “Cryptocurrency” and “Virtual Currency” were the organizational industry search terms. The data was then separated by changing the location of the headquarters to “USA”.

All Crunchbase Pro queries are dynamic and the results are updated over time. They can be customized with any company or investor name for analysis.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Stay up to date with the latest financing rounds, acquisitions and more with the Crunchbase Daily.

The post Cryptocurrency Experts Say These 4 Factors Are Driving Change In The Industry – Crunchbase News first appeared on 1st News Link.

source https://1stnewslink.com/cryptocurrency-experts-say-these-4-factors-are-driving-change-in-the-industry-crunchbase-news/

0 notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 7 years ago

Text

A Lump of Coal in the Internet’s Stocking: FCC Poised to Gut Net Neutrality Rules

NOVEMBER 27, 2017

In a new proposal issued last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set out a plan to eliminate net neutrality protections, ignoring the voices of millions of Internet users who weighed in to support those protections. The new rule would reclassify high-speed broadband as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service” (remember, the FCC is forbidden from imposing neutrality obligations on information services). It would then eliminate the bright-line rules against blocking, throttling, and pay-to-play (as well as the more nebulous general conduct standard) in favor of a simplistic transparency requirement. In other words, your ISP would be free to set itself up as an Internet gatekeeper, as long as it is honest about it.

This is a bad idea for many, many reasons. Here are a few.

Net Neutrality Has Been a Pillar of the Open Internet

The FCC’s decision to gut net neutrality protections isn’t just partisan business as usual; it’s a withdrawal from over a decade of work to protect Internet users from unfair practices by Internet service providers. While the FCC’s approach has changed over the years, its goal of promoting net neutrality did not. Two years ago, it finally adopted legally enforceable rules, most prominently bright-line prohibiting ISPs from blocking, throttling, and creating Internet “fast lanes” that would favor some sites and content over others. But, as the saying goes, “elections have consequences.” One consequence of the 2016 election is that the FCC has new leadership that feels free not just to change the rules, but to get rid of them altogether.

Ushering in a Pay-To-Play Internet

Because the draft order repeals net neutrality rules altogether, it allows ISPs to block or throttle lawful content, or give the highest-paying websites and apps a better ability to reach customers’ devices, or to favor Internet traffic from the ISPs’ own subsidiaries and business partners, all without any legal repercussions. It paves the way for an Internet that works more like cable television, where wealthy insiders decide which speakers can reach a broad audience. A pay-to-play Internet means that smaller sites and apps, or startups without major funding, will be forced to negotiate with multiple ISPs to avoid their content being buried, degraded, or even blocked.

The FCC’s decision to gut net neutrality protections isn’t just partisan business as usual; it’s a withdrawal from over a decade of work to protect Internet users from unfair practices.

The draft order claims that “latency-sensitive” applications will benefit from paying to connect to you faster and more reliably, while other apps and sites will continue to work as they do today. But without rules, nothing will require ISPs to give the same quality of service even to apps that pay the same amount, let alone those that can’t afford it. Content from an ISP’s business affiliates or favored partners will be able to get a fast lane no matter how much another website or app is willing to pay. The order justifies its conclusions by cherry-picking some economic analyses that support them, while ignoring the harms to free speech that flow from paid prioritization.

Weirdly, the proposal acknowledges the fears of “non-profits and independent and diverse content producers” who spoke up this year to say that pay-to-play Internet access is harmful. But it dismisses these concerns, saying that these speakers “may be less likely to need [quality-of-service] guarantees.” Not surprisingly, it doesn’t explain why non-profits and independent content producers don’t need the same access to Internet subscribers as major media companies do.

FCC or FTC?

The FCC’s proposal attempts to paper over its abdication of regulatory responsibility by insisting, mistakenly, that the Federal Trade Commission can adequately protect Internet subscribers. The idea is that ISPs have to be forthcoming about their practices, and if those practices harm consumers or competition, the FTC (and/or private antitrust lawyers) can hold them accountable.

The most basic problem with this theory is that it doesn’t actually forbid unfair data discrimination practices. If a company is forthright about its intent to sell your private data, block competitors’ content, or throttle competing apps, then the FTC will do nothing. And unlike clear net neutrality rules provided under Title II telling ISPs and the public what is and is not forbidden, the FTC only acts on a case-by-case basis after harm has occurred. The agency has no power to issue rules that prevent that harm in the first place. Finally, ISPs have been working hard to defang the FTC in court, with some success. Recently, AT&T won a case in federal appeals court establishing that it was immune to FTC oversight because it operated a telephone service. Though the decision has been vacated pending further proceedings, ISPs now stand a good chance of getting both the FCC and the FTC out of the picture, leaving customers without an advocate in the federal government.

What is worse, even the transparency rules have been pared back, on the assumption that customers don’t really need detailed information about network performance. But those metrics are crucial to identifying non-neutral practices. And the draft order suggests that the FCC won’t even enforce the transparency rules in any meaningful way. Without the ability to double-check how ISPs are behaving, we'll be left taking their word for it. That obviously would make it very difficult to persuade the FTC that the companies are saying one thing while doing another.

The Antitrust Head Fake

Net neutrality is sometimes thought of as a competition problem: if users could vote with their wallets and switch providers, ISPs would be more likely to respect their preferences. Following this line of thinking, the new proposal insists that antitrust lawyers (at the FTC and in private practice) can police anticompetitive behavior.

Unfortunately, this won’t work. Antitrust enforcement is in such dire shape when dealing with regulated industries like ISPs that the FTC itself warned Congress about it years ago. Thanks to two Supreme Court decisions (one of which involved Verizon), the courts are likely to deny access to antitrust remedies so long as the industry is regulated by a sector-specific statute and agency. The intent behind the rulings was to ensure that expert agencies administrating sector-specific laws handle disputes rather than generalized knowledge courts. In this instance, the expert agency and statute are the FCC and the Communications Act. Notably, the new proposal ignores these Supreme Court decisions.

Curiously, the new proposal ignores the current competition problem. It insists that the ISP market is competitive, even though a majority of Americans have only one choice of ISPs for high-speed broadband access of 100 mbps and up. That lack of choice isn’t a problem, the proposal suggests, because monopolies that face competition in some areas will act like they face competition everywhere. Even the evidence that shows that people rarely switch providers is treated as a sign of customer loyalty to the regional monopoly. Those times when Comcast refuses to cancel your cable subscription? Proof that the cable company is aggressively competing for your dollars.

At the core of the FCC’s contorted vision of the competitive landscape is the effort to lower our expectations by examining only the broadband market of 25 mbps downstream and 3 mbps upstream, which are relatively slow speeds today. Even at that level, the FCC found the market to be “moderately concentrated,” which, under the Department of Justice’s own guidelines, can be a source of “significant competitive concerns and often warrant scrutiny.” In fact, the FCC’s view of the competitive landscape directly contradicts the DOJ’s finding that large ISPs have the power and intent to stifle online competition—a stance the DOJ took just last week in its lawsuit to block AT&T’s merger with Time Warner.

Tech Giants Aren’t Going to Protect the Open Internet Either

The new proposal’s final justification for abandoning neutrality rules is that tech companies will police ISPs for us. In other words, ISPs won’t engage in unfair discrimination because Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and others will exert their own pressure against it.

This argument misunderstands a fundamental purpose of network neutrality: ensuring that the Internet remains an open field so that the titans of today can be disrupted by the startups of tomorrow. Google and Facebook aren’t going to do that for us; it is not their job to protect the interests of users, much less future competitors. That is why literally thousands of small businesses (including small ISPs, which the FCC completely ignored) have asked the FCC not to abandon its responsibility to navigate the public interest in the Internet. They have no reason to believe the biggest corporations will act on behalf of everyone else.

Their skepticism is justified. Think back to when Google and Verizon tried to sell the public on a deal that allowed them to favor their own products. Or when Facebook endorsed AT&T’s antitrust-violating merger with T-Mobile that would have raised prices on everyday wireless consumers. Or Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings’ suggestion (later withdrawn) that the company would be walking back their fight for network neutrality. Each of these were major decision points for Internet policy and all of them were crafted to serve their shareholder interests (which is expected since that is the first responsibility of a corporation).

There are many more flaws in the FCC’s proposal, which we will discuss in future posts (for example, the FCC’s continuing confusion about how the Internet works). But the key takeaway is this: the FCC is repealing, not replacing, principles and rules that have been crucial to the growth of the Open Internet.

That means the fight for net neutrality moves into a new phase – and we’ll need your help.

The best way to help right now is to contact Congress. But don’t stop there – we’ll need some offline noise to protect online speech. Activists are planning protests around the country and in DC – if there’s one in your area, come out and make your voice heard.

And if the FCC nonetheless continues to ignore public outcry and the public interest, we’ll have a new front: the courts. The proposed rules have any number of legal flaws, and we will be happy to point them out to a judge. The FCC may be abandoning its role in protecting the Internet, but we won’t.

TAKE ACTION

TELL CONGRESS: DON’T SELL THE INTERNET OUT

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/11/lump-coal-internets-stocking-fcc-poised-gut-net-neutrality-rules

65 notes · View notes

perfectirishgifts · 4 years ago

Text

A Betrothal To Data Is Also A Marriage To Cloud

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/a-betrothal-to-data-is-also-a-marriage-to-cloud/

A Betrothal To Data Is Also A Marriage To Cloud

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – DECEMBER 07: A bride and a groom visit the New York Public Library as the city … [] continues the re-opening efforts following restrictions imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus on December 07, 2020 in New York City. The pandemic has caused long-term repercussions throughout the tourism and entertainment industries, including temporary and permanent closures of historic and iconic venues, costing the city and businesses billions in revenue. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)

Technology evangelists love data. Talking about data makes them sound smart and considered, it allows them to make reference to deep-layer technologies like the neural networks that are building the Artificial Intelligence (AI) brains of the immediate future… and it sounds a whole lot more academically contemplative than any more general reference to ‘information’… almost as if any notion of information itself was ever really any different to the mathematically intricate world of data analytics and data management.

The unfortunate side effect of data being so prevalent, populous and all-pervading in modern IT systems is that data has sometimes become a throwaway term in some senses. Users today are often more focused on which app, which device, which online web service and which user interface option they’re going to have to play with, rather than the provenance, progeny and posterity of the data streams that feed all of the upper-tier technology layers that they actually touch every day.

Data betrothment is a happy marriage

This is an inconvenient truth because data remains a dynamic ‘thing’ still evolving into many different forms… all of which an enterprise organization should plight its troth to on a daily (if not hourly 24×7) basis. Businesses today, of any size, in any vertical, must be betrothed to their data. Further still, like any couple, data will move house from time to time… but at least in this case, we can say that the home always has the same roof over its head, as it has to reside in the world of hybrid cloud.

The world of data has given us the notion of the so-called ‘datasphere’. Back in 2010, it was comparable to every person on the planet having approximately 65 gigabytes of data each. Today in 2020, that figure has risen to 1,210 gigabytes per person. It will be 6,500 gigabytes per person by 2025.

The birth of online data marketplaces

What happens next in the datasphere is a compound effect where users themselves not only continue to create their own vortex of information, but a new type of information intercourse starts to happen. Online data marketplaces and exchanges where multinationals buy and sell data are now starting to flourish — and as many as a third of enterprise companies may be using these systems in the next couple of years.

Amit Walia, CEO at Informatica says that access to this external data obviously has a positive effect on corporate decision-making for most organizations. But the data playbooks we were using as recently as 18-months ago have gone out of the window, clearly in large part due to the massive globally disruptive events of 2020. Pre-pandemic data planning models for many firms are no longer accurate.

But Informatica’s Walia suggests that there is a defined way forward here. Organizations have realized that they can integrate outside data into their simulations to improve forecasting and run different scenarios to be able to rapidly change course as needed. However, bringing in external data from online marketplaces does come with its challenges.

He explains how the legal and compliance team at one large insurance provider his firm works with has established a framework to help address some of these challenges and assess risk (legal, regulatory, reputational, ethical). Frameworks like this help businesses assess the type of external data that the company can bring in, the parameters needed to combine it with internal data, then the all-important issues of compliance and security. All of which are essential to maintaining trust.

“Without trust in data, companies won’t be able to earn the trust of consumers, regulators, employees and partners alike. If companies want to monetize data assets through marketplaces, they must set the right governance benchmarks and treat privacy as a top priority,” said Walia.

Within the acceptable boundaries of marriage

Addressing structural problems such as these are part of the reason why the EU Commission recently admitted that its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been hard to implement. The Commission says that GDPR, “Equips the independent data protection authorities with stronger and harmonized enforcement powers and sets up a new governance system. It also creates a level playing field for all companies operating in the EU market.”

But while the GDPR has helped harmonize the rules across EU member states, there still remains a degree of fragmentation and diverging approaches across organizations. Walia says that to overcome these challenges, it’s important to bring together business and technical stakeholders so that those responsible can understand the data flow, processes and appropriate legitimate uses that comply with GDPR and map these to organizational policies.

“Anonymizing data, combined with a sound privacy and data protection plan that also considers data classes, assesses data exposure and prioritizes what’s most critical is the right approach. The same governance strategy should apply to other regulations outside the EU such as The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), said Walia.

For exemplars of best practice, we need to look no further than many of the world’s biggest tech firms, which Walia says are very conscious of the fact that consumers are now, more than ever, worried about how their data is used and stored. They realized first-hand that consumer trust and better privacy practice were essential to their long-term success.

But there are other sectors that are also paving the way. Walia cites the highly regulated financial and healthcare sectors that are seeing these new data challenges as a way to innovate. For healthcare, the pandemic has led to the integration of mobile apps and telemedicine in record time. In other segments, such as retail and manufacturing, more effective data management can be a competitive advantage for managing supply chains, products and customer data.

Data’s ‘I do’: a commitment to cloud

But whilst these examples show a clear case for innovation, the biggest hurdle for most is what Walia calls a touch of cloud commitment phobia. The number one priority for everyone right now is business resiliency, as businesses attempt to weather the storm and prepare for the rebound.

He acknowledges that most companies are perhaps only 20% on their way to cloud implementations – some a little less, some a little more. But while the biggest barrier to going cloud-first used to be security (or more accurately, perceived security), that dramatically changed in 2020 as organizations were forced to go digital due much more rapidly.

“Going cloud-first, cloud-native is no longer just a ‘maybe’ or nice to have, it’s a lifeline. So for those wedded and betrothed to their data, the goal is also to be very much married to the cloud. But as ever, this all boils down to culture. What’s needed is a mindset that puts data at the center of the business transformation. From there, we can determine the right skillsets, by taking action to employ a Chief Data Officer (CDO) and data analysts and, once they are in place, assess the technologies needed and develop the right solution.

Informatica’s offering in this space is known as The Informatica Intelligent Data Platform, a technology built on a microservices-based, API-driven and AI-powered architecture. This type of platform extension could well be the next ‘we have one too’ add-on that major tech vendors all attempt to tell us that they have capabilities in. Low-code application tooling is currently experiencing the same ‘revolution’. While Informatica is primarily known as a cloud data management and integration company and not as a dedicated data exchange innovator, pure-play specialists such as Dawex do exist that specialize in data exchange platform technology as a core competency.

Like most things, it is not an either-or scenario for skills and tech. From a skills perspective, in addition to formal training, creating common definitions and business glossaries for data can help increase data literacy across all employees. But even with the right skills, they won’t be able to keep up with the sheer volume of data and the growing number of data sources without the right technology.

As businesses now form a new and closer betrothment to their data, we may need to welcome in a few new partners into the relationship within acceptable behavior guidelines which will need to be clearly tabled and agreed upon before any bizarre love triangles start to develop.

Data, do you take information exchange to have and to hold, until death do you part?

I do.

From Cloud in Perfectirishgifts

0 notes

michaelandy101-blog · 4 years ago

Text

Who Is Responsible for Meeting Website Accessibility Compliance?

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/who-is-responsible-for-meeting-website-accessibility-compliance/

Who Is Responsible for Meeting Website Accessibility Compliance?

The pandemic of 2020 has changed the lives of everyone.

Were businesses and schools ready to meet the challenges for website accessibility compliance?

Adapting to new ways to work remotely or go to school was not always effortless, especially for persons with disabilities.

And meeting accessibility compliance historically took a back seat to just about every other business goal, creating a business risk.

Though remote work provided some with opportunities to continue to conduct business online, consumers and students quickly uncovered all the ways in which they could not do their work – preventing people from:

Doing their jobs.

Taking tests.

Completing assignments.

Holding meetings.

Ordering supplies during quarantines.

This created frustration on top of an already difficult time.

Somebody needed to be responsible.

For digital marketers, the rumblings about website accessibility may be unimportant until a client receives a demand letter or worse.

Getting an ADA accessibility lawsuit creates alarm, followed by confusion over the next steps.

Continue Reading Below

While the client is wrestling with this new expense, they may even ask why they were never made aware their website or mobile app was not accessible.

There have also been increasing concerns like:

Who is responsible for building websites, software, and mobile apps that not only are accessible but adhere to the accessibility laws of the country or state they reside in?

Is it ethical to create search engine marketing strategies for websites that are not tested for accessibility compliance?

Why is accessibility testing not included in usability testing, user research, software testing, and split testing of landing pages?

Are marketers, web designers, and developers legally liable if a client’s digital property fails to meet accessibility compliance requirements?

A Changing Work & Home Life Environment

It is estimated that 1.4 billion people around the world have a disability or impairment.

They are treated differently and even ignored in some countries.

The stigma with imperfection means that many people hide their impairments such as failing eyesight, dyslexia, or the inability to remember what they just read.

When companies sent their employees home to work remotely many adjusted to sharing bandwidth and computers with other members of the household.

Parents became teachers.

Students became bored.

Employees met on Zoom.

The time saved from not having to commute to work allowed for more time to study, practice skills, and for creating new projects.

Continue Reading Below

Some companies clearly thought it was high time to mess with our heads and make unexpected changes to their existing products.

Like changing Google’s branded icons into something that increases errors because we no longer understand what each icon refers to anymore.

Or that Facebook’s new user interface redesign better resembles a corn maze.

Or that the new Google Analytics is not even recognizable anymore.

It doesn’t seem logical to see so much attention on changing branded icons and user interface layouts when there are millions of people trying to work and study at home and facing accessibility barriers.

Gathering Data

Marketers look to data to decide how to improve page optimization for search engines and adjust marketing strategies.

They especially watch how Google is ranking webpages.

And the research into search behavior is extensive.

But even Google’s Core Web Vitals does not look to accessibility as a metric.

The use of assistive devices such as screen readers could provide some insight into how many students depend on them to access assignments by their teachers.

What is the performance like?

What computer devices were used?

Does speed matter to someone who listens to a page?

How about the student who needs more time to take notes from a page heavy on text?

Mobile is Google’s darling, but for many people with disabilities, it isn’t.

I record webpages for my clients with the MAC VoiceOver and Safari combination screen reader.

Listening to what their webpages sound like helps to understand the user experience for people who are blind, sight-impaired, or have reading and cognitive difficulties.

Little else makes an impression than hearing what you designed or built.

Nothing sells better than proof.

The Motivation for Web Accessibility

There has to be motivation other than the threat of ADA lawsuits to make companies care about persons with disabilities.

Regular accessibility testing and site compliance audits should be part of all design and development planning and QA procedures.

In addition to budget restraints, there aren’t enough developers trained in accessibility design for websites, mobile apps, and software.

Continue Reading Below

For many WordPress platform-dependent site owners, failing to meet WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines is common because theme remediation can be difficult.

And for third-party plugins, it’s next to impossible.

Welcome to 2021.

The rules have changed.

Accessibility Overlays

Imagine if you require a wheelchair to get into a store but before you can enter you must first:

Paint the lines for your handicapped parking spot.

Order the handicapped parking sign.

Build the ramp into the sidewalk.

Install the automatic door opener.

Redesign the aisles to allow more room for you to move around in.

That’s what an accessibility widget does.

Before a person with a disability can enter the website, they need to design it to work for them first.

This is discrimination.

There is no such thing as a perfectly accessible website or application that will automatically work for everyone with a disability.

The reality is that automatic accessibility overlays working in the background are a cheat based on false promises.

Despite the clever marketing and video of the convincing guy insisting your days of worrying about owning an accessible website are miraculously over.

Continue Reading Below

Artificial intelligence cannot replace humans.

We are each unique. Our brains are different.

We use computers in unique ways and depend on them to work when and how we need them.

Every time we tell ourselves that we know better than anyone else how a webpage should be used, we remove the right to choose what works for persons with impairments or disabilities and their specific needs.

Most people choose their own settings in their computer devices and browsers to help them interact with webpages and apps.

Accessibility widgets that override their settings, mimic, or conflict with them are not helpful.

The message sent by accessibility overlays and widgets is that your company didn’t bother to design and develop an accessible website and gave the whole experience to AI.

This raises a flag to legal firms looking for websites to sue.

The Accessibility Legal Landscape

Web accessibility litigation in the U.S. for 2020 shot up and shows no signs of slowing down.

Continue Reading Below

The U.K. and Ontario escalated their accessibility requirements, too.

What you should know:

1. ADA Laws in the U.S. as They Pertain to Websites Remain Unclear

There is a lack of precise ADA guidelines on websites up to this point.

The exception is Section 508 for government and GSA contract websites.

2. Serial Plaintiffs Look for Websites to Sue

Decisions differ by state and plaintiffs can sue outside their own state.

Serial filers are sometimes known as “testers of compliance” and plaintiffs do not need to use your website to be able to file a complaint.

Also, there is no limit on cases.

One well known serial plaintiff with a physical disability filed approximately 500 cases since October 2019.

3. What to Do After Receiving a Demand Letter

If you receive a demand letter, contact a lawyer who specializes in ADA and accessibility law immediately.

4. There Is No ADA Law in the U.S. Enforcing the WCAG Standard for Public Websites

However, related laws and various circuit court judgments are chipping away with decisions based on ethics and non-discrimination.

Continue Reading Below

5. The Ontarians With Disabilities Act (AODA) Takes Effect January 1, 2021

The AODA requires all digital content to conform to WCAG2.0 AA standards by January 1, 2021.

There are fines for non-compliance.

They provide online guidance, site testing, training, and filing compliance report policies.

6. WCAG 2.1 Adoption in Europe

The U.K. updated EN 301 549 which specifies the accessibility requirements for ICT products and services.

The standard to meet is WCAG2.1 AA.

Websites and mobile apps must provide an accessibility statement.

The deadline for meeting their digital accessibility regulations was September 23, 2020

In the U.S., on October 2, 2020, a bill called the “Online Accessibility Act” (H.R. 8478 – the “OAA”) was introduced.

It would amend the present ADA to add a new Title VI prohibiting discrimination by “any private owner or operator of a consumer-facing website or mobile application” against individuals with disabilities.

Already coming against a negative reception by disability rights advocates, this latest attempt has a similarity to H.R. 620 which never got past the House in the present administration.

Continue Reading Below

This is because it placed the burden on the person with disabilities to pursue and subsequently wait for remediation to occur.

The OAA allows 90 days for remediation of a complaint.

If not satisfied, then it goes to the Department of Justice, which has 180 days “to investigate.”

Steps to Take Now to Protect Your Business

There are automated tools that are free to use that provide a quick assessment of the most common accessibility issues on websites.

It’s important to note that they catch about 25% of the problems and don’t replace manual testing.

WCAG 2.2 is in draft format now, with an expected release next summer.

One of the additions is a change to the guidelines for the focus state, which is what we see when we navigate without a mouse.

Use CSS to enhance the focus state.

Web Developer Tools offer a built-in accessibility section that can be added to.

Continue Reading Below

Developers also have their own preferences.

Web developer tools can be enhanced to include additional testing tools for accessibility.

A different example of web developer tools in Firefox.

High on the list for manual testing is looking at the way headings are structured.

Not only are heading tags important for SEO, but they are also of particular interest for screen reader users who sort content by them.

WCAG2.1 spells out guidelines for headings that include making sure there is only H1 on a page.

If you look carefully, you will see a duplicate heading below, which is technically a failure, and even worse would be if both were linked to the same landing page.

Even if the page looks like it makes sense visually, with a screen reader the experience is very different.

If you were to listen to this page with a screen reader, you may wonder what’s behind “Everything you need to find.”

Continue Reading Below

For accessibility, understanding content in context makes even more sense when you listen to your content.

Descriptive headings and link anchor text requirements appear more obvious when you listen and hear what’s missing from your presentation.

The ability to manually look for areas to improve accessibility is easier with the proper tools.

No accessibility testing is complete without manual testing.

There are various tools available for web developers to use to help identify any issues.

Moving around a webpage without a mouse is a manual test performed by pressing the TAB key on your keyboard.

Continue Reading Below

The reading order should begin with a Skip to Content link, which should be there (and if not, it should be).

Each TAB key click should proceed to the next link in the DOM and is highlighted visually with a focus state.

Common errors with manual keyboard testing are:

The focus state disappears as it goes through the navigation and sub-levels.

Site search.

The sudden appearance of ads and pop-ups.

Sometimes Accessibility Compliance Is Difficult

For those who develop a serious interest in building inclusive websites or mobile apps, there is a large community of accessibility advocates, educators, and certified accessibility specialists who make themselves available.

There are free podcasts and videos providing instruction on how to make documents accessible, and how to use screen readers.

Look for webinars. Many are free.

There are guidelines for colors, images, layout, understandability, and compatibility with a broad range of user agents.

The most difficult is learning Accessible Rich Internet Applications or ARIA – which can conflict with HTML5 – but is necessary for screen readers to figure out what’s happening on each page.

Continue Reading Below

Who Is Responsible for Accessibility Compliance?

We are responsible for the content on our webpages.

This includes our videos, podcasts, forms, themes, and interactive elements.

It’s a lot to ask of beginners.

And for those who opt for ready-made websites, it’s a risk they may be unaware of.

Do yourself a favor and get an accessibility site audit done.

Hire a consultant or find an agency that offers accessibility testing as a service in addition to designing web sites or marketing them.

Add accessibility testing to your in-house projects.

It wouldn’t make any sense to produce products that are not ready to work for everyone.

Hire agencies that test with people with disabilities.

They are your best investment.

In 2021, you may be required to own an accessible website, mobile app, or online software application.

The best offense is knowing what you need to know.

Join me on January 12 at the SEJ eSummit where I deliver a presentation on “The Emergency Guide to Website Accessibility Compliance.”

Continue Reading Below

More Resources:

Image Credits

All screenshots taken by author, November 2020

if( !ss_u )

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments); if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window,document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1321385257908563');

fbq('track', 'PageView');

fbq('trackSingle', '1321385257908563', 'ViewContent', content_name: 'website-accessibility-compliance-who-is-responsible', content_category: 'web-development ' );

// end of scroll user Source link

#General

0 notes

golicit · 5 years ago

Text

Guest Post: Fictional SEC Official Discusses Crypto Off-the-Record

Neil J. Cohen

One of the hot topics in securities regulation and enforcement has been the question of what position the SEC will take with respect to cryptocurrencies. In the following guest post written in the form of a one-scene play, Neil J. Cohen, a lawyer and publisher of the Securities Reform Act Litigation Reporter, imagines a fictional conversation involving an SEC official discussing cryptocurrencies. I would like to thank Neil for submitting his play to be a guest post on this site – this is the first play that has appeared on this site! I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is Neil’s play.

******************

Author’s Introduction: This is a hopefully entertaining dialogue on two SEC enforcement actions against cryptocurrencies. In the scene below, the father is an SEC lawyer. His son is also a lawyer who trades cryptos. The two discuss the motivations to buy and sell tokens, the duty of the SEC to protect small investors, the Howey test, the need to encourage technological innovation and the civil rights of dissidents in the Trump administration.

Setting: Father and son are seated at a table

FATHER: Are you buying cryptos again? Why don’t you heed Warren Buffet’s warning that cryptos are “rat poison squared?” He also says that cryptos are a good long-term short sale.

SON: Dad, technology is not Mr. Buffet’s area of expertise. Bitcoin is a store of value and a hedge against depreciation of the dollar. Besides, it’s a cool collectable, that could keep appreciating. Remember Andy Warhol’s Brillo box. It was an exact copy, considered a joke, now it’s a museum piece.

My generation will earn less than yours. How will I ever be able to retire on a golf course unless I’m a great trader or lucky enough to buy the next Bitcoin? If you watch the price and volume movements of these coins you can sometimes hop on for a quick double or triple. The trick is to sell quickly when the price starts down. It’s like gambling— unless you are a true believer in a particular technology. Then you hold, hoping for wide adoption.

FATHER: You are saying that a crypto is like gold or a lottery ticket. But what about those who fall for the hype, hold on for dear life, and take 90% losses. My job as an SEC lawyer is to protect those people.

SON: Yeah, just like President Reagan sarcastically said, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” I can protect myself Dad.

Besides, the government is supposed to encourage useful innovations like blockchains. Why then did your office enjoin the Telegram messaging service to stop the sale of its Gram token? Telegram has two hundred million subscribers to its free encrypted service. If subscribers buy and exchange Grams, they could eliminate the middleman charges imposed by banks and credit card companies. Mr. Hinman from your own SEC office described other uses. He said, “Potential applications include supply chain management, intellectual property rights licensing, stock ownership transfers and countless others. There is real value in creating applications that can be accessed and executed electronically with a public, immutable record and without the need for a trusted third party to verify transactions.”

FATHER: The SEC does not want to prohibit the public from ever buying Grams. We just want to make sure the buyers fully understand the risks. That’s why we believe these tokens should be sold through a more formal securities offering. That requirement will cost the promotors a lot more and discourage new tokens. But with over 3000 coins on the market we’ve spent enough time liberally encouraging new technology. Now government agencies are cracking down. IRS has forced token holders to report every trade as a gain or loss instead of treating the trades as like-kind exchanges. The commodity regulators have allowed institutions to make short sales or buy put options on Bitcoin, which should deflate the price. To prevent money laundering and terrorism, the United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (‘FinCen”) may soon prohibit networks that don’t record buyer and seller information for each transaction.

SON: I thought the “SAFT” (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) was supposed to balance investment risk and token utility. I can understand why you think these risky digital assets should not be offered to the public before the public can use them. But the SAFT divides the sale into two parts. The first most risky part would be a formal security offering to institutions or accredited investors. After the blockchain is working those investors could sell tokens to the general public for their utility. Since the Telegram sale was a SAFT, why wasn’t that legal?

FATHER: The two steps of the sale are only a theoretical distinction. In practice, institutional investors typically buy the first offering under 2 cents with the expectation of selling for 20 cents or more to young people who hope to strike it rich by buying the next Bitcoin — or at least make a profit. It’s like a Ponzi scheme where a few early investors profit and the late comers probably take a bath. Its speculation for profit from beginning to end. It doesn’t matter if the promoter’s White Paper doesn’t promise or even hint that buyers will make a profit. We can assume that the prevalent motive for all buyers is to make money because they buy a lot more tokens than they use.

SON: But the SEC appears to be taking different positions on the enforcement against SAFT offerings. For example, the SEC fined Block.one but did not try to enjoin or rescind its huge $4 billion “securities offering.” In the Telegram case the SEC got an injunction to stop the sale. What’s the difference?

FATHER: In Block.one the promotors stated the value of the tokens would be increased by third parties who would make the applications for the blockchain. In Telegram the tokens were designed to be used by 200 million messenger users. This close connection supports the SEC’s view that the tokens are securities under the Howey test because their increase in value depends on Telegram’s efforts.

Of course, promoters are always supposed to increase token value by continually improving the speed and scalability of their blockchains. So it comes down to a balancing test that weighs the promotor’s contribution to value compared to third parties.

When Telegram was sued it did not assert a bright line defense that the tokens are exempt because they are inherently useful. Instead it maintains that, as applied to it, the SEC’s standard is unconstitutionally vague.

The SEC doesn’t have the resources to challenge all of these offerings but the Telegram token is especially problematic. Telegram could enrich itself by starting to take advertising money. Then, after the Gram is in circulation, Telegram could increase the Gram’s value by offering buyers ad-free messaging.

Then there is the question of Telegram’s leadership. The company was founded and is managed by a radical libertarian named Pavel Durov. He is nicknamed the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia” because he made millions by founding a social media platform there. But when Putin told him to turn over personal information on dissidents he refused. Durov then had to leave Russia. He set up Telegram to be a free encrypted messaging service. He has refused to sell personal information to advertisers or sell ads. He is currently supporting Telegram with the money he made in Russia.

Durov could use the Gram to promote his political views. In response to a terrorist attack in France he is on record as stating, “The French government is as responsible as the Islamic State for this because it is their policies and carelessness that eventually led to this tragedy. They take money away from hardworking people of France with outrageously high taxes and spend them on waging useless wars in the Middle East.”

Now this guy wants to launch a cryptocurrency. The last thing the U.S. needs is a charismatic idealist promoting an encrypted currency to 200 million fellow rebels. The sale could even affect the dollar, the world’s most trusted trading and investment currency. But the federal deficit will soon be 140% of the Gross Domestic Product. The growing debt is unsustainable. The government stopped Facebook’s Libra coin because it was a threat to the dollar. Now we are protecting the dollar from Telegram.

SON: A better way to protect the dollar would be for Congress to respect budgetary restraints. But since Congress no longer seems to care, citizens are smart to hedge with digital currency.

If Trump wins the next election, the drift from democracy to autocracy will accelerate. The government may well track dissidents and how they spend their money. There may even be capital controls to keep dissidents from moving their money abroad.

I agree with you that currently the SEC has a strong case that the Gram is a security. But that will change if a Trump reelection becomes tyrannical. Then, under the Howey balancing test, the primary catalyst for the popularity of the Gram will not be Telegram: It will be the government.

***

The post Guest Post: Fictional SEC Official Discusses Crypto Off-the-Record appeared first on The D&O Diary.

Guest Post: Fictional SEC Official Discusses Crypto Off-the-Record published first on

0 notes

neptunecreek · 5 years ago

Text

Equifax Data Breach Update: Backsliding

After Equifax’s calamitous 2017 data breach, its settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the private attorneys representing victims appears to offer two potential remedies to all 147 million American consumers affected: free credit monitoring, or if individuals already had free credit monitoring, an up to $125 cash payment. The FTC directed consumers affected by the breach to a third-party website where they could quickly and easily file their claim.

At the time, EFF tepidly commented on the settlements’ efforts to compensate consumers. But we also noted that the $125 payments would come from a $31 million fund, meaning that if all 147 million victims chose the payment, each person’s payment would be reduced on a pro rata basis to as little as 21 cents each.

Indeed. Less than one week after it announced the settlement, the commission began encouraging consumers to forego the monetary compensation in favor of free credit monitoring, even if they already had it. In a blog post, the FTC told consumers that, because an “unexpected number” of victims filed claims, “each person who takes the money option will wind up only getting a small amount of money. Nowhere near the $125 they could have gotten if there hadn’t been such an enormous number of claims filed.”

The government apparently failed to anticipate that, out of 147 million Americans victims, more than the maximum 248,000 who could have claimed their $125 without reducing the award given to each person would have opted to do so. Even worse, it instituted a variety of new burdensome, bureaucratic steps required to claim the monetary award to nudge victims away from financial compensation.

Consumers should not have to jump through hoops to receive compensation for serious data privacy harms. The “unexpected” number of claimants in this case should strongly signal to policymakers that Americans care about the security of their personal data. Consumers intuitively know what EFF has said all along: the companies that store consumer’s personal information—often without their knowledge—have an obligation to protect it. If they don’t, they should pay for the harm that ensues. And financial penalties should be high enough to incentivize better data privacy practices in the future.

This settlement ensures neither. While it’s easy to be angry at the FTC, the problem really lies with the current state of privacy law. We have said it before and will say it again: without new privacy laws, or a change in how the courts view those harms, companies will not adequately invest in consumer privacy protection.

If Congress wants to protect consumer privacy, it should enact legislation with the following rules and protections.

Information fiduciary and national data breach notification rules

This one is simple: companies that collect your personal information should have a legal duty to protect it. A strong information fiduciary law would require that companies follow best practices and exercise care to protect user information as a matter of course—not as a negotiated settlement years later.

Private right of action and real damages

We need to ensure a direct, private cause of action for data breaches and other digital privacy harms to give victims a more reasonable day in court than they have now. Because data harms can be hard to quantify financially, the law should provide statutory or liquidated damages, like it does for illegal wiretapping, where Congress long ago recognized that there should be no requirement to show financial harm in order to recover.

Data broker registration

Data brokers harvest and monetize our personal information without our knowledge or consent. Worse, many data brokers fail to securely store this sensitive information, predictably leading to data breaches. One good way to facilitate better oversight comes from Vermont’s new data privacy law, which requires data brokers to register annually with the government.

Non-discrimination rules

Pay-for-privacy is unfair. The law should prohibit companies from denying services, charging different prices, providing different quality levels, or otherwise discriminating against users who choose more private options.

Stronger rule-making authority for the FTC

Federal regulators must have the authority and funding to write and enforce consumer privacy rules. Congress should empower the FTC—an expert agency once tasked with data privacy regulation—to set and enforce sound security standards.

No federal pre-emption

Federal law should set a floor—not a ceiling—for privacy protection. States, as our “laboratories of democracy,” must retain their power to respond to technological changes and constituent concerns by enacting innovative data security policies.

No new criminal liability

And finally, one thing to avoid: existing computer crime laws are already extremely unfair and overbroad. That causes real harm and injustice. It also threatens the very security researchers—like the one who found an Equifax bug before the breach—who work to protect the rest of us. Any new efforts to address data breaches should focus on incentives to protect data rather than further expanding criminal liability for coders.

It has become increasingly clear that the Equifax settlement is inadequate for both compensating victims and preventing future harms. But future settlements won’t be better without changes in the law or in how courts treat privacy harms. U.S. privacy law does not even give FTC the power to require direct compensation to consumers—a powerful way to make companies pay consumers for the harm they caused. The FTC only secured it this time because individual suits were joined to its actions. Bottom line: we can’t expect the current, limited-power FTC to clean up the messes created by our failure to require stronger data protections.

Our legislators have an obligation to enact the stronger data privacy protections that their constituents want and deserve.

Note: Thanks to EFF Legal Intern Victoria Noble for help with this update.

from Deeplinks https://ift.tt/2NFbNUo

#Deeplinks

0 notes

holmquistewduckettwq53insur-blog · 5 years ago

Text

immigrants can’t afford insurance

immigrants can t afford insurance

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :protectionquotes.xyz

SOURCES:

immigrants can t afford insurance

Recent immigrants, as described their coverage. So it’s cuts out the middleman. Optional for the states main reason immigrants are immigration status, immigrants believe Theodore, Edwin Melendez and a coverage gap for most expensive setting for willingness to expand coverage). To enjoy the benefits residency does not apply York would have needed gave false information will known as Obama care, until and outs of the for Part A. This Ore existing condition. Is cover undocumented seniors as Medicaid or chip could baby. Off-exchange health insurance the U.S. for a To get around this cost of even a for ; the special people born in the you prepared to enroll Covered California. But in the problems. “One of things happen with do-gooder?”” insurance after 18 months New York City: Commonwealth will lack insurance in pass the budget, or from 19 percent in time just wanna Ono premium subsidies that would she said. Also as contractors lower their costs Find out what s happening plans and “inbound immigrant” .

Idea received a unanimous hear if you finance immigrants, according to city at the southern border suggests. As U.S. lawmakers would prove politically toxic it has a full without insurance or it as they are not benefits such as (CHIPRA), doing a simple web to know about the insurance companies. I already subsidize the old,” he This is the area difficult to pin down. If the state had and publicly insured immigrants a few days after care to just the one suggest a good a public charge. . I-94 number (of haven t paid into the amount of time serious health problems to How much do you or immigration status of still be eligible for of their high health What should I do? Cases. But immigrants who Kelley notes, the inpatient Unresolved health problems can cost. While the Trump recent years, causing the which company do you adult unauthorized immigrants, it service for low-income people a result, the percentage immigrants alike, it does .

Immigrants who have been better than no coverage children do not qualify the late 1990s, the care in general. U.S. lawyer even though there the U.S., one of I borrow? Thanks for to vote on later provided adequate immigration documentation. To those ages 19 led by Budget Committee uncompensated health care costs get a discount on the program, because most the first five years citizens persists among those in need of a me. “For example, a bought the car tonight...but, regardless of work to cripple the fine, insurance, unless they had longed you’ve been here more expensive than Medicare. Important to recognize that since very few major percent in 2004. Immigrant it look strange? I ve expenses by $1,123 per specifically for immigrants. The 80-year-old enrolls in just immigrants. Immigrants, both fellow at the Urban disagreement was over who “Running in Place: How into purchasing a new so many immigrants lack important to be aware looking into purchasing a to the ways that .

the California Immigrant Policy been in the U.S. for All.” The bill, of external sites. Why his garage till I mean they’re expected to miles and about 5 national survey of day of the individual mandate, more expensive than Medicare. 2019 that would have if the government will effect? “ Is it to buy Marketplace health insurance has been the poverty level. In also extend below the immigrants aged 65 or our current policy of these purposes. But last analysts to review other passed your test or spectrum are longing for and no longer need subsidies in the exchange even afford to take a plan on June of Medicaid, to cover that have been smuggled that, like Florida and on the amount of but recent immigrants are (states have the option philosophies and medical evidence part of a volume would not make a currently senior academic adviser Medicaid, there s a five-year So all that is serve some 27 million insurers more. The present .

Free clinic or cheap on immigrants’ use of Medicaid and chip due for recent immigrants for single hospitalization can drive for other benefits such the best coverage, for people who have paid state to eventually allow insured and his insurance Healthcare Act, also known political philosophies and medical 19 and 25, as But federal regulations stipulate health reform since 2006. To 100,000 people. To care access of immigrant of time you have with a requirement that immigrant s chance of getting your eligible for subsidies states have extensive rules federally and state-funded medical later in life and health reform since is too expensive. Do worried about my insurance accounted for 87.4 percent calls, I just talk brands of cars and AA does not have one way and it there any car Insurance Medicaid, except for Medicaid that disproportionately serve these looking into purchasing a currently senior academic adviser to condition overall Medicaid number or an I-94 undocumented immigrants. Some states utter bollocks i might .

Part A, but recent buy into the national to an employer-sponsored plan concerns about its cost. At my parents house pushed by Democratic Gov. Before I can do has expanded coverage for work in firms that the poverty level, regardless 4) and you arenât health care, local officials in services that are considered The other car lost pull you there on old male. SHOULD I may find that an affected by the, get cheap car insurance, they had access to residency status. Since emergency no coverage gap for undocumented immigrants look including Medicaid, when applying for their dependent family through immigrants legal eligibility insurance company “ What s Immigrant families have important and immobilizer? I live that second car hit proposals to expand California’s travel insurance, but it undocumented immigrants, particularly at who have been in an enrollment center, and to vote on later this, and submitted a determines (on paper) as idea last year. It insurance to be able when the bell code .

And Medicare Part B Renault Clio under comprehensive from a variety of unless the state requires how much you could “All Democrats just raised your enrollment and verification proportion of those legally at the um Medical immigrants turn to black-market decided) fuel efficient car population: immigrants. In “ health care of any sort. Of documented individuals. A Who can save me reality is that, because for 19 under? I m just an estimate “” and she had Dee and hospitals for free already down being cheated? Undocumented aliens because he prospects and thereby raise weighted positive factor” that health care? I am federal-state health program for etc and i was should have access to canât deny you benefit general — for themselves plans if they re otherwise included a provision in, as most Americans or a Peugeot 106 in November. A few your insurance go up policy was over $4,000. Is asking me what general — for themselves here legally. Such permission, They found that immigrants .

But over the first result, the percentage of or making it illegal population has some form stayed flat since that Percentage of Low-Income Children for in a statement who are unauthorized has around $100 a month protections of health insurance, the two major cornerstones low-income uninsured county residents, as “immigrant health insurance” 23 percent of native-born be asked if they what would a health future for America as of the Affordable Healthcare between that of non citizens of the costs in health coverage when they enrollees are required to for expansion of Medicaid age of 64. But and health reform since of documented individuals. An actually enrolled. Stipulates that humane step towards an undocumented immigrants received a 51-17. The state Senate, able to effectively treat enrolling due to miscommunication. “bring broker who has Congress and president willing don’t cover doctor visits, before Donald Trump’s inauguration, at IHPI. “Undocumented immigrants individual market health insurance to give states more allow you to drive off the books, others .

Townhome, how would I system, such as the that even after statistically second-lowest-cost silver plan in favor of illegal immigrant that did expand Medicaid, Family members who aren’t recent immigrants are often am buying a town home legal affairs correspondent for to expand Medicaid under immigrants applies instead for Kelley. “Both Medicaid expansion helping them get care without documentation? No one when they arrive in the Department of Health of enrollees and the in certain states may rights?” says Kelley. “Both and fraudulent claims. Learn is $165 and i get around this problem, in California, which has enrolled in Medicare. (It’s to cripple the fine, care policy. California already submit documentation of their money they can award conditions,” she told NPR. Users agree to the of 31. The sidebar the intertwined issues of in direct ways.” U.S. than five years, she “inbound immigrant” health plans the health care access undocumented immigrants | Institute will provide advice specific There s bipartisan consensus on citizens to have jobs .

Must lead,”. “While But why can t me the following groups are than 1 million additional Sheetal Matani. Similarly, low-income immigrants were excluded,” so incomes increase with age it appears on page local fiscal burdens that the Affordable Care Act, the cost of such health insurance compared with been granted lawful permanent Federal law () are undocumented. Of course, undocumented immigrants has long when they arrive in to policy changes by correct? “ How Much my 2004 600rr was; S.S.I. so need something affect my insurance rate week. Please help, and not provided adequate immigration to some immigrants who to be the first the two. The Trump it must be followed which means they’re expected the case of pregnant caps on the premiums assistance. that our current That’s the end of unauthorized immigrants suggests that in about a month have Medicaid under the through 18 years old can be a factor email address or mobile about 9 percent of has a, which .

With her husband and was the first state the Trump administration. The coverage on the Affordable poverty level. But recent a 64-year-old (in both age limit) why is “heavily weighted positive factor” a public charge. . It is 3200 fully person’s ability to pay insurance work? What s the uninsured, even if they qualify for certain other receive premium subsidies if of legal residency (enrollees how the AA applies employers may be able name isn t on their of the documents that with a requirement that to the United States, the most for recent beneficiaries. Within this group, new?” “ What is few options for recent we have a Congress Newsom said in January, Until American health care and immigrants.” As Makhlouf Hi, i went on Immigration and America s former professor of history will decrease if they individual coverage. And it’s a travel insurance plan to prevent for recent is available regardless of that these profiles are about risking just paying immigrants are much less .

(2005). “Health Care Expenditures 20, 2019, in Sacramento. Thanks!”” “” Would zero (note that New Jersey Governor Gavin Newsom who to enrolling only during permanent residents in the has changed the most immigrants during their first hands for giving millions percent in 1995 to here are some things were already excluded from If she opts to period before coverage can exchange/marketplaces. Immigrants can also Cox (2004). “Covering New support. Neither the Congressional treatable conditions,” she told know anything about legal good for the country in the study. “Immigrants availability varies considerably from supplemental life insurance mean.? Different populations of immigrants, likely not make any The science behind gene be cheaper if my for Medicaid if they Bk for a girl of U.S.born individuals (see allow for medical tourism. Toronto citizen so only to cover undocumented seniors collision coverage, so I Question OR COMMENTS ABOUT both indirect ways and support for in an i checked the benefits before I can do on immigrants’ use of .

And Medicare (which serves previous administration said it health care for children “Safety net hospitals are either your email address Americans, although there’s also when I collected it, tweeted against giving free residents and around 6 budget comes after Democratic and benefits of immigration, its initial year. The 200 percent of the with the legislature leaders, “They can work longer. You’re eligible for them. Coverage effective in July. Through Covered California. But for recent cannot buy it is plausible that Almost half of unauthorized, 2021. But what policies voracious culture coverage, sharp and compare” “ If healthy and able to state, recent immigrants with the AA’s premium subsidies. It’s far better than limited in scope than Under longstanding policy, Medicaid, – under the AA. Proposing changes nearly a 65. People who have provided medical coverage to are another option, particularly who bear somewhat higher can purchase Medicare even sustainable. As part of widening between Latinos and dialysis when they are by Governor Gavin Newsom .

Immigrants contributed to society The report is part a person might become it in 2017. Health offer means immigrant employees approve the estimate and CONTACT US AT Leigh ton she couldn t afford my What does supplemental life for the state to all. Recent immigrants who income that makes a costs because so many the law, the 11.3 we provide access to the same coverage. But charitable or religious organizations for subsidies in the widening between Latinos and week, Mayor Pete Buttigieg When President Trump’s health care have jobs with employer as an immigration incentive. Their emergency rooms. That Question A.9 are important your expenses. , it These are critical questions, on the budget, and limited period The penalty is similar wrote about young adolescence almost half of all take employer-sponsored insurance (87 for people, with insurance | medicare resources.org We would after 1996 and had been difficult or But they may apply not have health care of classes(2 AP classes and presentations to insurance companies. .

Not fair to give the benefits of being into effect in Florida immigrants contributed to society my insurance to go We didn t call the would be no coverage can be obtained with America as a whole. Some of these immigrants, opposition to these policies have access to some you want for home many undocumented immigrants need in them; the percent and 2 honor classes) In other words, health citizen adults to report Car Insurance? I m trying care overlook a critical they face serious barriers we are getting married due to miscommunication. But as a negative factor make it into the adults should not have mandate” which had been for people who are she needs to have stage last week, Mayor that are considered when as low-income, native-born citizen with subsidies if the for All.” The bill, immigrants. The major disagreement survive arduous travel for – whether or not that a short-term policy provide help to middle-income the immigrant community that was terminated for the .

Economic drivers in their because the car was “ Whats the average favor and against the longer used to determine signed by the state s you’re not lawfully present, Some recent immigrants have or immigrants who have Pacific Standard s Ideas section Keep Hispanics Uninsured.” New the poverty level are who aren t applying for go down. Btu Am current leadership don’t make Science, covering law, opioids, the AA’s premium subsidies. Want health coverage for they have no insurance for help, either on coverage. Family members who driver admitting fault. I really need my consequences of policies put begins 1 July. State There is a variety enroll in coverage through AP classes and 2 universal coverage.” The state Children s Health Insurance Program a, which would Don. Et al. (2000). Must have had minimum uninsured, and sponsors with Health plans (and subsidies) insurance is the best There’s concern among consumer in the exchange with a work history in rates go up? “ exchanges is “morally unacceptable.” .

In states that didn’t crack down on immigrants’ below. , including those points on my license parents. A report by for car Insurance? Am companies for this? Thanks The new rule updates also cause of the data from the late does care for the A (because they have the age of 17. Provide access to a likely to pass this professor of history and to reimburse hospitals for really Mont know much My question is, now assist these providers. A haven t paid into the changed – or haven’t create “strong incentives for the study. “Immigrants may I don t have insurance than legal residents or get my birth control pills How much do you happened, and the police undocumented children up to countries in the United particularly children and/or pregnant using state funds. Many of hands in support. need the rich to funds to make that with low and middle-incomes in Congress eliminated it car insurance for my up with the way policies are not compliant .

Was written, lawmakers realized are less likely to and paid for insurance non-citizens can enter their three times higher than don’t qualify for premium accounted for 12.6 percent was terminated for the are ineligible. “The majority be uninsured (44 percent) immigration enforcement purposes. If the first things on insurance mean.? What does enroll—even with premiums. Once And there are for Unauthorized immigrants and temporary or temporary work visas) policy behind the politics. Included a provision similar applicants with income below nearly everyone supports it. health insurance plans are the police, but I after receiving âqualifiedâ immigration. During this window, gap. Ironically, there are to insure a Peugeot to pay. Federal law other topics. She previously in the US for The main reason immigrants farm workers by researcher like by 100-150 $ from many public-health benefits, June 2016 to get undocumented immigrants - BBC my car the cheapest this, and submitted an is dominated by Democrats, to 138 percent of rates for Latino citizen .

Would it cost me miles and about 5 costs of $98 million, can t even afford to non-immigrants or immigrants who then three times as to health insurance, as your grandmother has an are eligible to enroll that within the same several years in the high incidence of to as Lincoln s Law will help you live I panicked when driving policies may focus on about your health insurance. Them. There are a 17mph over the speed bell code is loaded insolvency. The Institute of eligible for Medicaid, If Renault Clio under comprehensive coverage in the United tax credit or lower and to health care Elderly immigrants, though often two decades, the rules expand Medicaid, only time Theodore, Edwin Melendez and have,” he said. Expanding if that will affect decline in economic slowdowns, for the 2020 Democratic five years when Medicaid the content of external to take a day U.S. resident can enroll quite difficult for sponsors otherwise eligible. Be prepared, obtain coverage, including student .

They sent an appraiser family or household member Part B is $135.50/month I mean I know United Status.” January. Villarejo, You can, however, apply to the five-year waiting Last year I was immigrants contributed to society paying taxes that go willing to bear a senior were able to however, for the possibility age of 64, and significantly more likely to presentations to insurance companies. Or her income for I test drove the for the first time this problem has eased are here, it finds, years of riding experience a couple of years get a brand new the exchange, may find workforce and annually contribute children up to age immigrants less able to political philosophies and policy locate and deport undocumented Enter your zip code for the same reason college. I will be health insurance, but states has been rejected, leaving extend below the poverty as Lincoln s Law was called for expansion of March 1996 and 2005 But if you’re not bed, 2.5 bath,2 car .

I was involved in small group premiums for I was involved in — at a cost she would have the on page 113 of and patients who can’t as do Illinois, Massachusetts, system over the last a free quote in to 138 percent of in January, describing the immigrant who uses premium community centers that disproportionately York City: Commonwealth Fund, 10 years) are NOT terms of what health involved in a car same administration that is in college. I will non-Hispanic white citizen workers, undocumented immigrants whose kidneys work and we are been in the U.S. married and i am their high health risks. Democrat running for president were funding public health government health programs. And daily tips that will own insurance/ “ How private market would have program for undocumented immigrants incomes below 200 percent for immigrants who are their fears about welfare for the 170 countries a volume entitled Cunningham, and Am currently working coverage. We are nationally would insurance for one .

A.6 and A.8 on buy policies on the provision would not it but will it “universal access to affordable were, undocumented immigrants Holly Mitchell and Assembly dollar amount as how an estimate “” Car 7500 Security Boulevard, Baltimore, not offering benefits to before talking to the immigrants, particularly at the date you became health insurance of those the Democratic-controlled legislature is youâre signed up, weâll under my name, or my brother told me are uninsured, a level in order to provide at the University of not in terms of government or employer-sponsored coverage. Resided continually in the saving. Tired of paying believes that they are costs incurred by uninsured, try to claim? Or immigration status. And HealthCare.gov enforcement purposes. If youâre part of its broader jeopardy.” Has the Trump ways.” U.S. immigrants pay permission to increase the to people with income have the option to 2018. An ironic health co I am already workers by researcher Don work-related injury, but less .

Individual coverage to someone coverage, including Medicaid (which study authors write. Overall, it is in Georgia.” system, Zallman said in are perfectly legal uses hard to go to that within the same can be even higher of other special enrollment not be provided to hyper-focus on rights can to enter the document below the poverty level. Mean it’s easier to insurance.what amount could I have been difficult or but, my brothers and to be unrealistic. While site where you can critical population: immigrants. In as hospital stays. Buyers a country’s stance regarding subject to this prohibition. The agent in charge or mail them to]. And they are to afford health insurance despite their high rates What would prednisone cost health care but are cover all the of safety-net clinics and I do not have families that own and supply: No candidate has insurance program manual? I the developed nations for stays. Buyers should definitely for the care they enrollment periods are available .

Plans through the exchange The George Washington University. And Gov. Gavin Newsom have decried the budget as long as the here too: If she looks at the policy that would cover new married and i am fund the program, because that provides emergency and which she has insured. U.S. citizenship or had and health care policy. Understood by exchange staff, involved in the study. One study showed that funding they get. And car, which she has and I didn t have could not participate in disproportionately poor, with high hasn’t been paying Medicare stays. Buyers should definitely health insurance or pay default, and shown only immigrants tend to work U.S. resident for more sign their report and for public benefits. The not work in the that injury. Because some Those centers are required times as much as two important long-term challenges for non-immigrants or immigrants Democrats agreed on Sunday step, but it must years of productive life Childhood Arrivals—DACA—is not considered that, despite their high .

Worked up a cost primary, unveiled a program The measure must still your grandmother on the early February 2006 adds I purchase a Medical lawfully present in the But that’s particularly important Should I call a mission of health insurance.org of pregnant women). When coverage will be comprehensive, immigrants, and how they’ve insurance through the exchange full alarm system and percent of premiums paid be 18 months this apply to elderly recent immigrant is likely to 200 Percent of Poverty, to be relying on cost be for that children were eligible, families ask, what does care have and do you state comes as the allow for the provision i am over 25 are eligible for means ability to maintain productive Trump was inaugurated, California Cox California is about I recently came to guidelines. So the two 2015 but had not a life product for to keep her individual and Sheetal Matani (2001). To fund long-term care the deal, which was of expenditures. In contrast, .

Provision of the AA need H06 policy to state-funded medical care to room services. Elderly immigrants, recently concluded that racial/ethnic grandmother’s position. Individual health caused last year?” “ I quoted my Annual Insurance now and get health programmed that was and local governments and & plan for me(23) are some things you exchange even if some will likely not make low-income immigrants who didn’t (which), you can u.k. Doesn t have eventually allowed undocumented immigrants getting quotes everyone is obtained coverage, including student immigrants are not offered let s take a look relaxed guidelines when it outer part. As home a new shift for unable to provide adequate thanks in advance? My 2018, a recent immigrant behalf of documented individuals. Tackle immigration reform, knowing or her income for makes them eligible. But unauthorized immigrants between the my own insurance. My proposal. (It would have exchange. She would still obtain coverage. The law in Iowa without employer-provided Congress effectively eliminated the elderly immigrants, since individual .

And inevitably decline in expand Medicaid. Florida actually this law if the five years. To get phone number. But they canceled coverage – due the age of 17. The coverage would take sometimes referred to as exchange, with subsidies if least five years, there’s wouldn’t-it-be-nice item on the times the premiums that sponsors with low and in the United States going for the most an accident three weeks mimicking the that Congress immigrants, and how they’ve insurance must be purchased Insurance.” Washington, DC: Kaiser insurance plan is far AA calls for people market for recent cannot or making it illegal citizen workers and 81 expensive. Do you know Congress effectively eliminated the reporter for Science, covering “individual mandate” which had the cars insured in that younger enrollees pay. The topic of health-care no means my fault. the insurance company say York legislation did not that immigrant workers, particularly is ATM insurance so haven t even called my approximately half those of plans through the exchange .

Years ago. Here’s an uncompensated emergency care costs first state to pass for such waivers, because your income. If you progressive proposals might also or visas. California has is $165 and i Because the bills have Health Insurance Program, commonly hospitalization can drive many When it comes to immigrants during their first the United States. Analyses car insurance!!!!? *iam17yrs old. Immigrant families, in the services, regardless of their age 19. Some 240,000 abroad, for example — the rate charged for insurance mean.? “ How through the Health Insurance to undo Obama-era protections whose kidneys are failing, the first things on expanded Medicaid, where that s Americans, but not for insurance be cheaper if Expanding medical has been an immigrant is “likely insurance outside of the population. The primary reason full-price plans in the left many unsure of The primary reason for percent of the state’s subsidize the poor, the ATM insurance so expensive? On whether they’ll get taxes. Although many undocumented even though U.S.born children .

Immigrant Status, and Family and that numerous states a booming economy, some being registered or insured to be unrealistic. While the citizenship or immigration that immigrants are much the fee to see enrollment period for ; not all immigrants are the budget, or risk rates wont be effected? Her income for the in the legislature. As exchange in the state funds. Federal legislation and take employer-sponsored insurance care for them in fine and does it five years and becomes been in the U.S. days to provide documentation health insurance coverage. But AFN ARBOR, Mich. -- am 20 years old, care organizations, which makes Thanks in advance for the first year after parents. A report by families have important details of La Gaza (2006). Be a cost burden such as immigrants from they had resided in zero demerit points mean that plan, her premium children did not benefit not having insurance in care without documentation? No state funds to provide on whether they’ll get .

While I was in unresolved immigration data matching “ Car Insurance not THIS ARTICLE, CONTACT US an immigrant is likely proposal, the state will Is it any wonder eligible, because they don’t insurance coverage are two fine print and understand critical population: immigrants. In & not getting insurance? Coverage. So even with incidence of occupational injuries. Same coverage. Is it reform and by other immigrants, but it also for premium subsidies even if you’re lawfully present, state’s workforce and annually their universal health care, only to those that stipulate that she needs undocumented immigrants need health my insurance be high government-funded care.” So what employer s group health insurance 20 & not getting American taxpayers. Before the became uninsured. Figure 2. and “inbound immigrant” health a policy was over temporarily — for a change the rules that anyone help me Am left many unsure of that eventually the payoff to immigrants has really policy changes by the for illegal immigrants - low-income children and those .

immigrants can t afford insurance

0 notes

click2watch · 6 years ago

Text

What Will It Take to Regulate Crypto Exchanges?

Konstantinos Stylianou is an assistant professor at the University of Leeds School of Law, and a visiting scientist at the Brown University Department of Computer Science.

Shortly after Bitcoin SV was delisted from Binance, CoinDesk advisor Michael Casey published an insightful op-ed discussing whether the delisting amounted to censorship (it doesn’t), whether exchanges should be held to high standards of neutrality (they should) and whether regulation is necessary to achieve this result (it is).

The idea is that because major exchanges play such a crucial role in the industry (Casey claims that “[t]hey are the cryptocurrency industry) they should not be allowed to arbitrarily discriminate between crypto assets — rather they should be regulated to operate as neutral platforms.

But ask any regulation expert and they will tell you that, absent Goldilocks conditions (hold that thought), neutrality is neither the natural state of markets, nor the natural instinct of regulators.

If that’s the case, regulation of the kind that would have saved Bitcoin SV and of the kind Casey advocates for – while possible – might not quite be around the corner.

Neutrality is rare and regulation even rarer

That neutrality is not the natural state of markets, we’ve known for a while.

It is hard to notice when there is an abundance of choice and people get what they want, but when there is too little of something, the owner of that bottleneck resource often becomes partial and does not treat everyone the same.

When the first telephone networks were rolled out, they suppressed devices and services from competitors and even arbitrarily refused call service. Microsoft saw Netscape as a threat and sabotaged it. Apple and AT&T similarly blocked Skype in the early days of the iPhone. There are countless other examples of platforms disfavoring complements or customers.

Were regulators called in to save the day in all these cases? They were indeed. Telephone networks were designated as common carriers, which came with the obligation to provide non-discriminatory service; Microsoft was forced by antitrust regulators to abandon the practices that squeezed Netscape out of the market; and Apple and AT&T dropped their restrictions against Skype after the Federal Communications Commission threatened them with net neutrality action.

It may seem that regulation came to the rescue whenever necessary to restore neutrality. But the truth is that despite occasional corrections, neutrality still remains the exception in the market and in regulatory action.

Part of the reason is that the law actually acknowledges that non-neutrality is not all that bad. The ability to deviate from uniform practice is what allows companies to differentiate themselves in the market. Not all grocery stores carry the same products, neither do they all place them in the exact same shelf, and this helps consumers and producers address diversified needs.

Even extreme differentiation, like exclusive agreements that make a business proposition unique in the market, can be good. For example, Nintendo’s exclusive console agreements helped bootstrap an entire industry by tying popular games to Nintendo’s consoles thereby increasing competition.

It is not that this kind of discriminatory practices have no downsides. Far from it. But it is also a standard assumption in modern market-driven economies is that regulation distorts markets too, and therefore, the enactment of rules requires proof that, left alone, the market would perform demonstrably worse.

In the mind of a regulator

To decide whether Binance, or any exchange for that matter, should be neutral and not discriminate against crypto assets (be it cryptocurrencies, crypto derivatives or other), regulators would consider a number of factors.

Power The most decisive factor to regulate is sustained monopoly power or dominance in the market.

Regulators usually impose neutrality on platforms because users and/or complements (read: cryptocurrencies) can’t or realistically won’t turn to alternative platforms, which would allow the dominant platform to exploit them.

If Binance were a monopoly exchange, then delisting a cryptocurrency would result in driving it out of the market. Or, if the cost of switching from Binance to another exchange was prohibitively high, then, similarly, Binance users and listed cryptocurrencies would be trapped by Binance’s choices.

But neither of those conditions are true here. There are numerous exchanges on which Bitcoin SV can be traded, and signing up with Binance does not preclude users from trading on other exchanges too. In other words, both Bitcoin SV and users multi-home.

In that sense, Bitcoin SV is not in the same position as companies listed on NYSE or Nasdaq, because by and large, companies are listed on only one exchange, and delisting them would mean that they cease to be publicly traded.

Harm and market distortion Regardless of power, would decisions such as Binance’s delisting of Bitcoin SV undermine important public interest goals such as market stability and efficiency, consumer and investor protection, and capital formation?

Regulation is more likely if the problematic conduct threatens harm to public interest goals, is frequent, and has long-lasting effects without second-best alternatives being able to contain them.

At the moment, the picture is still fluid. For one thing, regulators still grapple with the question of whether crypto assets even form part of financial markets. If they do not, then there would be no legal basis to subject exchanges to financial regulation.

Assuming that they do, the frequency of the problematic conduct matters too. Crypto delisting is not unheard of but it is not exactly common either. There is no exact formula to calculate a threshold. In the case of network neutrality rules, fewer than five instances were enough to set the regulatory process in motion, whereas for privacy, numerous and repeated instances by tech giants have not resulted in regulation yet.

We also don’t know the extent of the harm of delisting. When the trading of conventional securities is suspended, they effectively disappear from the market, perhaps permanently. On the other hand, despite Bitcoin SV’s delisting from Binance, it still traded on another seven exchanges.

To be sure, Bitcoin SV’s price suffered significantly upon the announcement of the delisting on April 15 (from $73 on April 14 to $55 on April 15), and the effects to its medium-long term liquidity and reputation are yet to be accounted for (likely bleak).

This, in turn, can have severe consequences for investors’ financial situation.

But regulation is concerned with broad effects, not individual actors. The key lies less in the fate of Bitcoin SV specifically, and more in the effect of the practice of delisting in the overall stability of the market. It is a very different situation if delisting is regarded as a normal business practice whose risk is acceptably assumed by investors, and if delisting is regarded as serving no other purpose but to manipulate the market or to defraud investors. Only the latter could invite regulation.

Information inadequacies The market can only work efficiently if all parties are sufficiently well informed to evaluate their options.

If investors had perfect information, then their reactions to Bitcoin SV’s delisting would reflect their up-to-date assessment, and there would be no need for regulation to protect them from anything. Any price, reputation and liquidity fluctuations would correspond to investors’ full and accurate beliefs and manipulation by Binance would be impossible.

This is clearly not the case here or in any other market. Perfect information is one of the most unrealistic assumptions of neoclassical economics in modern economies.

But the obvious solution to information inadequacies is more information and more transparency, not neutrality. The difference is that transparency enables actors to make a (presumably better) choice, whereas neutrality is a choice itself: it mandates a specific treatment (i.e. non-discrimination).

Regulators would normally want to start with the least onerous measure (transparency). If it is not effective, they can escalate to neutrality. If still ineffective, they may even dictate the rules of listing and delisting themselves.

Unequal bargaining power and anticompetitive conduct

The main idea behind non-regulated competitive markets is that actors behave well because market forces discipline them. If, however, the competitive forces exercised by competitors (other exchanges), complements (cryptoassets) or customers (investors) are weak, market players (exchanges) are unconstrained to act in ways that harm others.

Think about how much more difficult it would be for an exchange to delist Bitcoin with its much higher market capitalization, velocity and liquidity compared to Bitcoin SV.

Evidently, Bitcoin is more valuable to exchanges and therefore the constraints around how exchanges treat it are tighter. In reality, the majority of cryptocurrencies are nowhere near as important as Bitcoin, and the fact that they are not backed by unified institutional actors further diminishes their bargaining power.

Large investors could have a similar constraining effect, since exchanges would not want to lose investors who can generate large volumes.

For this to work it would mean that cryptocurrency ownership is concentrated in large investors (there is evidence in that direction, for example 42 percent of Bitcoin is owned by the top 0.01 of addresses), but also that these investors are actually active and that churn is high or at least plausible.

Politics, politics, politics

The factors listed above leave out one important aspect of regulation: the fact that, ultimately, it is a political game, not an academic exercise. If politics favor regulation then that’s the most likely outcome regardless of how the factors listed above weigh in. We even have a fancy name for it: New Institutionalism.

As a function of the executive branch, regulation is subject to political pressure and revolves around interest groups. Nascent immature markets, such as that of cryptoassets, are usually captured by the interests of the existing regulatory authority and those of the public.

They are captured by the existing authority (in the US, this is the SEC) because they are already in the game and by extending their reach they justify their existence. Widened reach and heightened activity entitles them to more funding and higher rating. Just look at how everyone speaks of the European Commission as the global antitrust and privacy enforcer after having gone after Google and the like.

Nascent markets are also more likely to be regulated in the name of the public interest both because people are generally more vulnerable in new market contexts, and because industry interests have not developed lobbying capacity yet. This leaves the field clear to side with the public which is generally seen as the weaker side.

A few industry associations are already present in blockchain markets (EEA, PTDL, ISDA) but none seems to represent the collective interests of exchanges. On the contrary, regulatory interest and grassroots support for crypto assets seem stronger.

In the end, it is usually not a question of whether a market segment will be regulated or not; rather a question of how it will be regulated.

Coin in vice via Shutterstock

This news post is collected from CoinDesk

Recommended Read

Editor choice

BinBot Pro – Safest & Highly Recommended Binary Options Auto Trading Robot

Do you live in a country like USA or Canada where using automated trading systems is a problem? If you do then now we ...

9.5

Demo & Pro Version Try It Now

Read full review

The post What Will It Take to Regulate Crypto Exchanges? appeared first on Click 2 Watch.

More Details Here → https://click2.watch/what-will-it-take-to-regulate-crypto-exchanges

#Click2Watch

0 notes

blockchain-help · 6 years ago

Text

Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and How It Works?

One of the most popular terms in the blockchain industry is Initial Public Offering (ICO), which is analogous to the conventional business Initial Public Offering (IPO). The major difference is that the latter is more dependent on venture capitalists for it to kick-off while in the case of ICO, anybody can sponsor ― the only requirement is for them to own a cryptocurrency.

What is ICO?

An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is an innovative and unique form of blockchain-based financing mechanism, which involves the issuance of a start-up stake (token) on a blockchain in exchange for investors cryptocurrencies. The component of the transaction is handled by blockchain protocols known as smart contracts. A smart contract is automated to execute a transaction based on the set criteria agreed by any two parties involved in a transaction.

ICO is another business disruption made possible by blockchain. It has been the major means of funding for blockchain related startups since 2017 when it started attracting billions of dollars investments without any intervention of financial services personnel.

According to CoinDesk, in 2017, ICO funding totaled about $5.4 billion dollars and during the first two months of 2018 alone, ICO attracted more than $4 billion, a surprising increase. Up until then, ICO funding is usually below $20 million per month.

What is Token/Cryptocoin?

Token or crypto coin are the digital coins offered during an ICO and it is equivalent to shares offered in conventional business IPOs. When the smart contract executes, it allocates a token to an investor in relation to the worth of the cryptocurrency transferred.

Importance/Benefits of ICO

Some of the advantages of ICO for startup entrepreneurs include;

Easy Finance of new Projects

Most internet projects are open-source, which means their products can be freely used by anybody even without paying them a dime. Thanks to ICO, any blockchain related company (open-source included) can now source for to kick-off a new project without the need of moving around investors office to pitch their business plan.

It helps to build customer base

Users are the measurement of the success of any digital platform. When a company issues an ICO, most of the time, the new investors are given free access to the platform. This is another plus for a start as these investors will contribute to their number of users. Although IPO investors can also contribute and check on the company they invested in, their population makes the difference. In an IPO, a company can have two venture capitalists checking out the product while in ICO, there can be as much as a thousand.

It gets everyone involved

Conventional business investments such as IPO are retained for certain group of people with different name tags ranging from venture capitalists, Angel investors to mutual funds. With ICO, anybody, either you are not as rich as most of the venture capitalists, provided you have a cryptocurrency; satisfy with the ICO clause, you are good to go.

Allow access to funds worldwide

ICOs allows access to potential investors around the globe. The blockchain is a unified platform where citizens of all countries can voluntarily trade provided the nation’s law is not against it.

No taxation

Raised funds during ICO is not subject to taxation. The issue of taxation may occur when developers are trying to exchange received investment funds for fiat currency to start the financing of the project. If they are lucky to find a platform that has all they need and they could pay using the digital coin, the probability of being taxed is minimal.

Risks of ICOs

The following are to be considered by investors before exchanging their cryptocurrency for a token in a company;

No Guiding Rules and Regulations

Just like the cryptocurrency platform which has no authority body controlling it, the ICOs too is not regulated by any financial body to ensure a thorough regulation. There have been reported ICOs scam such as the case of Pincoin and iFan which allegedly scammed about 32,000 people of $660 million. Many government bodies are now stepping in to reduce the rate of frauds committed through ICOs. But there is a concern if authority bodies stepped into this platform, would it still remain anonymous?

Failure to Deliver

With the ease at which fund is raised, founders may become complacent leading to their inability to deliver as promised. And since there is no way to hold them responsible for such, they are able to walk away freely without any security agency on their trail.

To avoid any of the two risks of investing in ICOs as listed above, ensure you read through the business model, if it looks like a scam, then avoid it, do not be tempted by gratifying return. Blockchain investments should be treated like any business and not a Ponzi scheme.

How to launch an ICO

If you are considering a blockchain related technology which you believe will revolutionize the digital space and will like to raise funds through Blockchains using ICOs, read through the following guides;

Idea creation

Just as any business starts with an idea, to start an ICO launch, get your idea on paper. Share it with others to get more insight. You may even conduct market research to examine its success potentiality.

Getting a team

When you have a well-developed idea, assemble a team to help you with the dream ― depending on what you will need. Ensure they believe in the project to avoid future trouble for everyone. This can determine whether the project will succeed or fail.

Get to the Planning Table

You and your team should discuss how things will work out. Best ways to raise funds and how much you will need for the successful execution of the project.

Consult Experts

To avoid future catastrophes, it is advisable to discuss your plan with an expert or a present CEO in a related company to get an insight on how things should look like.

Create a Business Plan

Get all your ideas and discoveries on paper. Estimate what the future looks like and how you are planning to handle it.

Get a Lawyer

For proper valuation and registration of your company, you may need a legal adviser. Aside from that, a legal adviser could tell you if you are violating any law including Anti-Money Laundering (AML) or Know Your Customer (KYC) policy.

Promoting Your Token Sale

Now that all is set, you may proceed to launch your ICO on the blockchain platform of your choice. Marketing the release of the token is allowed too.

Showcase the Product

Since you are not a scam, you should be able to showcase the prototype of your product ― better before the ICOs announcement or immediately after. This will boost investors interest in your product.

Conclusion

Although there have been lots of reported ICOs scams, there are also many successful ICOs that has generated great ROIs for investors such as Ethereum ICO in 2014 which raised $18 million within 42 days. As at the time of launching, the token was priced at $0.43 but as at 16th of January, 2018, it worth $1,019.89 ― more than 237,083%.

#blockchainDevelopment #blockchainApplications #Cryptocurrency #initial coin offerings #Crypto Exchange

0 notes

mikemortgage · 6 years ago

Text

Shifting work hours pushing fast-food workers into precarious employment

Madeleine Miller started working part-time at a Kanata, Ont., Tim Hortons as soon as she turned 15.

She found her work schedule erratic. She’d often be scheduled for a three-hour shift on the weekends, but would then be asked to stay much longer on busy days. Sometimes, her boss would then renege and cut back those extended hours.

She saw people, including a recent immigrant trying to save for higher education, sent home early several times because of slow sales.

“I never knew how much money I was going to be making and I could never plan anything around my schedule,” said the now 16-year old who quit her job after eight months to focus more on school. She plans to look for another job once this semester ends, but will apply at independent retailers where she’s heard owners treat employees better.

The practice of regularly sending workers home early falls within the law, but further complicates life for precarious workers in low-wage jobs and may be ultimately detrimental for businesses in an industry with high employee turnover.

Restaurant Brands International, the parent company of Tim Hortons, did not respond to questions about the practice and the difficulties it can create for employees, but instead emailed a short statement.

“Most Tim Hortons restaurants are operated by franchisees who are empowered to use their best judgement in managing their employees and to comply with all provincial employment regulations,” wrote spokeswoman Jane Almeida.

The coffee-and-doughnut brand is not the only restaurant chain that sends staff home during a quiet shift.

The Canadian Press heard from a former manager-in-training for McDonald’s Canada who said each location tracks hourly sales and staff costs on a spreadsheet in-store and a formula determines if they’re over- or under-staffed at any given hour.

The former employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to continued ties to McDonald’s, said it was common to send employees home if the formula resulted in a plus one, two or more. The source said they’d been sent home numerous times while working for the burger chain.

“Restaurants try to balance employee preferences and the requirements of the business, while at the same time complying with the law,” wrote McDonald’s Canada spokeswoman Kristen Hunter in a statement, adding that’s the same for locations operated by franchisees or the corporation.

She also did not respond to questions posed about the company’s practices.

Cutting scheduled shifts is legal and allows businesses to make staffing changes according to business needs, said Marc Rodrigue, a senior associate at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP.

“Practically speaking, if a fast-food establishment has no customers coming in, it’s not making money, frankly,” he said. “Maybe you don’t need to have 10 people on. Maybe five people is good enough.”

Policy-makers have tried to strike a balance and offer some protection to businesses in those circumstances, while allowing a level of certainty for employees, he said, adding it’s unlikely businesses over-schedule on purpose.

At least in Ontario, the three-hour mark is typically the time employees would get sent home, he said. Provincial legislation states that is the minimum amount of time an employee who regularly works more than three hours a day must be paid for if their shift is cancelled.

But just because a company meets the minimum work hours doesn’t mean it hasn’t breached a worker’s employment agreement, said Sunira Chaudhri, a partner with Levitt LLP in Toronto.

If an employee’s contract states, for example, that they will work a 40-hour week, but management consistently cuts their shifts to half that, “that’s a material change and oh, I have one heck of a law case on my hands,” she said.

It may be that employers have worked the ability to change employee shifts with little notice into their contracts, she said.

“I think it sets people up for precarious employment,” she said, referencing a term that lacks an agreed upon definition but tends to mean work that is insecure, and without the benefits and protections afforded to full-time, permanent staff.

Andrew Langille, a Toronto-based labour lawyer and activist, agrees “there’s a range of problems when it comes to shorting people on shifts.”

In addition to grappling with an unsteady income, employees could have trouble co-ordinating their work hours with a second job or childcare, he said. Securing safe transportation could be a difficult for shifts that end late at night or early in the morning.

Consistently shorting employees’ on promised hours can hurt businesses too, said Langille, leading to higher labour costs thanks to increased turnover.

“If it happens too frequently, your employees are going to go find another job.”

Follow @AleksSagan on Twitter.

Companies in this story: (TSX:QSR)

from Financial Post http://bit.ly/2AAUbSC via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

#IFTTT #Financial Post

0 notes

growlegalweed-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Legal Weed Resources

Check out... https://legalweed.gq/420/are-cryptocurrencies-the-future-of-the-cannabis-industry/

Are Cryptocurrencies the Future of the Cannabis Industry

Authored By: Tony Coombes

The legal cannabis industry and the cryptocurrency industry appear to have a budding relationship, if you’ll excuse the pun.

The two share a lot of common ground. Both operate in legally gray areas, particularly in the United States. They face many of the same challenges from financial, political, and regulatory standpoints. Their user bases could even be said to overlap, as both legal cannabis and cryptocurrency are most popular with younger demographics.

Their shared traits aside, cannabis and cryptocurrency have complementary business models that are likely to bolster one another as adoption – in both – becomes more widespread. Some companies on both sides of the aisle are already taking advantage of this natural synergy. We’re going to present a brief survey of the separate cannabis and crypto business landscapes and point out the important intersections developing between the two.

Crypto’s Challenges

The challenges facing cryptocurrency adoption are all too familiar. Despite operating in the public sphere for the better part of a decade, cryptocurrencies are still viewed as a fringe financial tool by the mainstream media, public, and financial institutions. Part of this is practical. Cryptocurrencies are relatively new, if viewed from the thousand-year history of currency, and they do not yet enjoy day-to-day use anywhere outside of a few tech enclaves in Malta, Puerto Rico, and some major cities in the U.S. and Asia. They are, in a word, unfamiliar.

Few government regulatory agencies know exactly how to approach them, and even fewer businesses trust them as a secure store of value. This is partly due to their current volatility and partly due to their low adoption rate. It ends up being a bit of a vicious cycle. It’s difficult to get merchants to accept crypto because few individuals or financial institutions are willing to handle them. As a result, fewer merchants are willing to accept them, and round and round the issue goes.

Then there are some very real legal issues. It’s not entirely clear whether some, all, or no cryptocurrencies qualify as securities. They are not traditional currencies, as such, and so are not treated or taxed in the same way. And they possess a technological component that sets them apart. They are stored and traded on blockchains, which offer fast, distributed, and transparent transaction chains. These advantages are a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to regulation, however, as blockchains can transcend financial institutions, businesses, and even national borders.

The Cannabis Hurdle

Let’s just assume, for the moment, that we’re talking about portions of the world where cannabis is entirely legal. That lets us dispense, to use another pun, with all the areas where cannabis enjoys not-quite-official status – no-enforcement zones, decriminalized areas, and so on. So, we’re really talking about states, in particular, where marijuana dispensaries are all aboveboard, legal, and recognized by the U.S. government.

Even with all that official backing, cannabis dispensaries and farms face significant challenges. Few banks want to offer loans or credit to a marijuana-based enterprise due to the newness of the market and the sticky legal issues that arise when states’ rights come into play. Marijuana is still not legal on the federal level, and because banks are required by law to be federally insured, it’s not entirely clear whether they can play on an equal playing field in the marijuana industry.

This is important. It means that’s the billion-dollar, legal marijuana industry (and marijuana is now legal in two-thirds of U.S. states) must operate on a cash-only basis, much like its black-market cousin. This puts it in the same “unbanked” boat as much of the third world.

The Synergies

It’s this “unbanked” situation that really creates the potential for crypto and cannabis to come together. Cryptocurrencies have demonstrated, via their blockchain technology, that they present a viable alternative for folks unwilling or unable to secure traditional banking accounts. As originally spelled out by Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto in his landmark white paper, cryptocurrencies contain within their blockchains all the trust and information needed to bypass third-party intermediaries, like banks, entirely. Value can be stored in a distributed and open way across the blockchain, and it can be transferred without the involvement of a financial or government entity.

It’s been done before, though the comparison is likely to raise eyebrows. The first widespread adoption case for Bitcoin was actually the Silk Road black market, where drugs, guns, and other unsavory items could be bought anonymously and in an (at the time) untraceable fashion with Bitcoin.

This association between cryptocurrencies and drugs might feel uncomfortable, at first, but they both lend each other an air of respectability in the long-run. Marijuana may be federally proscribed, but it is legal at the state level. Cryptocurrencies might get sideways glances from U.S. tax and regulatory officials, but there’s nothing inherently illegal about owning or using a Bitcoin.

Blockchain tech and cannabis seem to go hand in hand in this regard. Cannabis operators can rely on a blockchain tailored for their use as both a store of value and a transaction medium that’s more secure and easier to handle than cash. At the same time, the blockchain gets a ready-made group of adopters to display as a real-world test case. After all, if the blockchain works well for securely tracking and handling cannabis transactions, why wouldn’t it work just as seamlessly in auto, flight, or grocery transactions?

Both industries have a lot to prove, both to the public and to regulators. The blockchain is practically designed for transparent, easily accountable transactions. This gives cannabis operators some safety from government regulators looking to ensure that product isn’t being moved into still-black markets, and it gives would-be cryptocurrencies some credibility in terms of handling large numbers of day-to-day transactions.

Early Adopters

There are several major projects currently working to wed the crypto and cannabis industries. Most of them popped into being during 2014. The five most prominent are PotCoin, CannabisCoin, DopeCoin, HempCoin, and CannaCoin. As of May 2018, none has yet achieved widespread adoption. At the moment, a new cannabis coin is being rolled out called the VapeCoin which will be accepted on one of the biggest cannabis and vape marketplaces. However, they all share the same basic use case – giving marijuana growers, distributors, and associated industries a common medium of exchange and verifiable store of value.

Tellingly, all but CannaCoin boast market caps in the millions of U.S. dollars. PotCoin, the oldest of the bunch, has a market cap of $31 million.

Growing Up Together

Both crypto and cannabis are brand-new industries. The infrastructure for both is almost nonexistent from every possible angle. In fact, neither enjoy completely legal status across the entire United States. Cannabis is currently only legal on a state-by-state basis, while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has a hands-off policy with regards to cryptocurrency exchanges.

The two are likely to grow up together, so to speak. Their shared challenges create opportunities for complementary growth, particularly in the legal and regulatory arenas. Cryptocurrencies give transparency and accountability to marijuana operators. Marijuana operators create a valuable and stable customer base for cryptocurrencies, in addition to injected capital. Both are poised for growth as U.S. demographics lean increasingly left in terms of regulation. Overall, cannabis and crypto present a unique view of the future financial world.

References

https://www.investopedia.com/news/top-marijuana-cryptocurrencies/

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/307979

https://vapertunity.com

https://vapertunitycoin.com/

https://theeliquidboutique.co.uk/

If you’d like to contact the author.. Tony is available at tony.coombes85(at)gmail.com

#Cannabis #Cryptocurrencies #Future #Industry

0 notes

johnaculbreath · 6 years ago

Text

The top 10 law and tech news stories of 2018

Home

Daily News

The top 10 law and tech news stories of 2018

Legal Technology

The top 10 law and tech news stories of 2018

By Jason Tashea

Posted December 21, 2018, 6:30 am CST

Shutterstock

What were 2018's most important legal tech stories? ABA Journal legal affairs writer Jason Tashea takes a look back on the biggest news in law and technology, including Facebook’s never-ending missteps, the creation of new data privacy standards and the destruction of federal net neutrality.

1. The Fourth Amendment evolves for a digital era.

One of the year’s U.S. Supreme Court barnburners was U.S. v. Carpenter, where a 5-4 court found that a warrant was necessary when seeking geolocation data about a suspect from a service provider.

“Given the unique nature of cellphone location records, the fact that the information is held by a third party does not by itself overcome the user’s claim to Fourth Amendment protection,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the majority opinion.

At the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago this year, Electronic Privacy Information Center senior counsel Alan Butler told the ABA Journal that Carpenter is a major inflection point for the Fourth Amendment.

“I think many will look back on Fourth Amendment cases as before Carpenter and after Carpenter,” he said.

Even with this win for privacy advocates, there are plenty of unresolved issues as law enforcement agencies wrangle with technology and their search powers. For example, it was reported this year that the FBI and police in North Carolina are using “reverse” search warrants to collect cellphone location data of individuals near crime scenes. These warrants lack specificity and do not identify suspects.

2. Data protection gets some teeth.

Speaking of inflection points, data privacy got one May 25, when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation went into effect.

The GDPR, which replaced a 1995 EU directive, covers topics as diverse as a right to be forgotten and an individual’s ability to confront automated decision-making systems.

Enforcement of the law will be done through data protection authorities, which are government agencies in the EU member states. Failure to comply could be devastating—a company could be fined up to 4 percent of its global annual revenue.

In June, California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, the country’s strictest consumer privacy law.

The law applies to any company that does business in California and has gross revenues above $25 million; annually buys, receives or sells personal information of 50,000 or more consumers, households or devices; or derives 50 percent or more of its annual revenue from selling personal information.

Tracking parts of the EU’s GDPR, the CCPA gives consumers access to their data, the power to have that data deleted and the ability to opt out of having their data sold. California passed a separate law protecting the data collected and transmitted by internet-enabled devices.

The need for these laws and smarter cybersecurity was underscored by the hack of hotel company Marriott International revealed in November, which spilled the data of as many as 500 million customers, ranging from names to contact information to passport numbers. Experts told Wired the breach was as big as it was because it went on for about four years; it was a vulnerability Marriott inherited when it bought Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide in 2016.

3. Facebook’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year.

Shutterstock

Already under fire for its role propagating misinformation that may have affected the 2016 presidential election, Facebook got more bad news this year.

In March, the New York Times detailed the links between the social network giants and London-based Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm that had been involved with the presidential campaigns of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and then-candidate Donald Trump. The company had access to personal data of about 87 million Facebook users and was able to mine that data in order to better target potential voters.

Shortly after this news broke, the Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into Facebook’s privacy practices. The results of that investigation are still forthcoming. Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg have since testified in front of Congress and the European Parliament.

In December, a British Parliamentary committee made public internal Facebook emails illustrating how the company would favor some companies and punish others. Reaction was harsh on both sides of the Atlantic. Claude Moraes, a member of the European Parliament, called for tougher regulations of the “possible monopoly” of social media giants.

In the states, Columbia University law professor Tim Wu Tweeted that the recent revelations should bring more attention to Facebook’s antitrust and anti-competitive behavior.

The antitrust / competition implications of the latest Facebook revelations need be discussed more by the media. Among other things, I think they clearly add to the case that the acquisition of WhatsApp was illegal; also suggest exclusionary conduct against Twitter/Vine

— Tim Wu (@superwuster) December 5, 2018

4. Net neutrality, we hardly knew ye.

Shutterstock

On June 11, net neutrality ceased to exist at the federal level.

Originally passed in 2015 and upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2016, the rules required that internet service providers like AT&T and Comcast treat all web traffic equally. This meant that, for example, providers would not be allowed to “throttle” or change the speed with which a person accesses a website. The repeal allows ISPs to block or slow some online traffic. In other cases, the provider can negotiate with a website for “fast lanes” to users.

There was a last-minute attempt by Congress to save the rule. While the Senate passed a bill in a rare showing of bipartisan support, the legislation did not gain traction in the House.

With no federal rules on the books, California passed its own net neutrality law this year. The Department of Justice sued to stop the state’s rules from going into effect. The case is ongoing.

California is not alone. Governors in six states signed executive orders supporting net neutrality principles and three states enacted net neutrality legislation this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

5. Trump makes a Chinese phone company great again.

Chinese telecom company ZTE Corp. was saved from collapse this year.

The company, which uses American technology, pleaded guilty in 2017 to exporting that technology to Iran and North Korea, agreeing to pay a $1.19 billion penalty. In April, the U.S. Department of Commerce determined that ZTE made false statements on its compliance documents. This led the U.S. to ban American companies from exporting products to ZTE for seven years. In response, ZTE suspended its major operations.

In May, President Donald Trump stated he would work with Chinese president Xi Jinping to end the ban. Under a new settlement, the ban was lifted in July.

The Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 blocked the settlement, but a similar bill in the House that the president ultimately signed let the deal stand.

Beyond working around U.S. sanctions, many believe that the company—which has close ties to the Chinese government—and its products are a national security threat. The National Defense Authorization Act largely banned the use of ZTE and rival Chinese company Huawei’s products by U.S. agencies and government contractors.

“I think both Huawei, ZTE and multiple other Chinese companies pose a threat to our national interests—our national economic interests, and our national security interests,” U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on CBS’ Face the Nation this month.

In December, Japan banned the two companies’ hardware from its 4G networks. Canada, where Huawei’s CFO was arrested this month at the behest of the American government, is considering a similar ban.

6. Mega media mergers are proposed.

Shutterstock

Telecommunications and media companies made big moves in 2018.

In June, T-Mobile filed with the Federal Communications Commission to buy rival Sprint for $26 billion. The companies are respectively the third and fourth biggest cellular carriers in the country. In September, the FCC announced it would take more time to review the proposed deal. While speaking at a conference in Barcelona, J. Braxton Carter, T-Mobile chief financial officer, said the deal may close in the first half of 2019, according to Reuters.

Walt Disney Co. had announced its plan to buy 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion in stock back in 2017, but Comcast set off a bidding war this year. Once the dust settled, Disney won with a $71.3 billion counteroffer.

The deal is expected to be set in the early part of 2019. Reuters reports that Brazil’s antitrust regulator released a report in December that raised concerns about concentration of power and market control if the merger went through.

The third major deal is in a protracted legal dispute. A federal judge greenlighted AT&T’s proposed $85 billion purchase of Time Warner in June, but the Department of Justice has fought against the decision. In a filing, attorneys for the DOJ argued that U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of Washington, D.C., ignored “fundamental principles of economics and common sense” in making his decision.

The case is on appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and arguments took place earlier in December.

7. Apple and Samsung call a truce.

Shutterstock

The heavyweight matchup between smartphone producers is finally over.

Dating back to 2011, the litigation surrounded design and utility patents and involved multiple retrials and appeals, including one round at the U.S. Supreme Court. The appeals largely pertained to significant jury awards for Apple, including one from a 2012 trial totaling $1 billion. Those damages were lowered to $930 million after a retrial.

In June, the companies finally settled outstanding claims and counterclaims in the Northern District of California. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh signed the order dismissing with prejudice, meaning the claims cannot be brought again.

“This settlement marks the official end of the ‘smartphone patent wars,’” Brian Love, an assistant professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, told the CNET. “So, it seems like an opportune time to ask: After almost a decade of litigation, what was accomplished? I’d say very little.”

8. Manufacturers of self-driving cars temporarily pause tests after pedestrian fatality.

In March, an autonomous vehicle owned by ride-sourcing company Uber hit and killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona. It was likely the first known pedestrian fatality from to self-driving technology.

During the night of the incident, the car was traveling under the posted speed limit of 45 miles per hour. The vehicle did have a human driver in the driver’s seat, however she was watching television show on her phone at the time of the accident, according to a report by the Tempe Police Department.

Uber quickly settled with the victim’s family for an undisclosed amount, according to Tech Crunch.

After the incident, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey suspended Uber’s ability to test its technology on the state’s public streets. Uber also stopped tests of its self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto.

The criminal investigation was transferred to the Yavapai County Attorney, and the case is still under review, according to Penny Cramer, administrative assistant to Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk.

In December, Uber stated its intention to restart its tests. However, the vehicles will only be used on a path between two of the company’s Pittsburgh offices and will not be tested at night or in wet conditions. The cars will also be capped at 25 mph.

9. Legal tech acquisitions carry on.

Screenshot courtesy of Lexicata’s Twitter feed.

It’s been another year of significant legal technology mergers.

In January, Avvo was acquired by Internet Brands, which already owned the Martindale-Nolo Legal Marketing Network. This summer, Internet Brands announced it would discontinue Avvo Legal Services, a fixed-cost service, and in October, the company rebranded its legal offerings as Martindale-Avvo.

Legal research company Fastcase purchased legal technology company Docket Alarm and Law Street Media, a legal news site, marking an entrance into the media market. According to a press release at the time, Law Street will be retooled and relaunched in the second quarter of 2019 to highlight national and state legal news complemented by analytics provided by Fastcase’s other products.

In April, court technology company Tyler Technologies acquired analytics firm Socrata. In October, cloud computing platform Clio announced its acquisition of Lexicata, a cloud-based client intake and management tool.

In November, legal consulting and technology company Elevate Services bought data analysis and consulting company LexPredict and contract management company Sumati Group in December.

This is just a small sample of this year’s numerous acquisitions.

10. Mugshots.com’s alleged owners get their own mugshots.

Thomas Keesee, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office; Sahar Sahid, Broward County Sheriff’s Office.

In a new step against online extortion schemes, the four alleged owners and operators of Mugshots.com were arrested and extradited to California this summer. The men face charges of extortion, money laundering and identity theft.

Mugshots.com and other similarly situated websites operate “depublishing” schemes where they collect public mugshot and arrest records and publish them to their site. When someone asks for the photo to be taken down, the website demands a fee. For many, paying one site leads to the mugshot appearing on a different website, according to an affidavit filed May 10.

The California Attorney General’s Office alleged in its release that over a three-year period, the defendants collected more than $64,000 in removal fees from approximately 175 individuals with California billing addresses; and during the same period collected more than $2 million in removal fees from approximately 5,703 individuals.

States, including California, have attempted to rein in these websites with dubious impact. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, 18 states have passed laws to restrict mugshot websites. California passed a ban on charging money to take down photos in 2014.

Because of the industry’s response and lackluster action taken by law enforcement up until now, Pew points out that the success of these laws has been limited.

The top 10 law and tech news stories of 2018 republished via ABA Journal Daily News - Business of Law

0 notes

blockheadbrands · 6 years ago

Text

78-Year-Old Man Evicted For Using Medical Marijuana

Adam Drury of High Times Reports:

Federal law leaves the decision to evict cannabis users from HUD housing up to landlords. 78-year-old John Flickner’s landlord chose to evict him.

The sun sets early up in Niagara Falls, New York, this time of year. And by the time a city marshal finished reading 78-year-old John Flickner his eviction order, streetlights were just starting to flicker on. Holding a plastic freezer bag containing his medical prescriptions, Flickner, who’s confined to a wheelchair, left his HUD-subsidized apartment and took an elevator down to the lobby while a Niagara Towers custodian changed the locks on the door.

As the dark crept over the icy, 28-degree day, Flickner pondered where he would go—and how he would get there. Flickner had some help from friends, who eventually found him a place to stay. But no one could find a vehicle large enough to carry him and his wheelchair there. With no other options, Flickner powered up his motorized wheelchair, left his former Niagara Towers home behind and rolled through a supermarket parking lot, across a busy road and down the sidewalk to the Niagara Gospel Rescue Mission homeless shelter.

Property Company Needlessly Evicts 78-Year-Old Medical Cannabis Patient

John Flickner still doesn’t have long-term housing secured. He’s currently staying with his 71-year-old friend, Andree Levesque, in a motel room. “If I have to stay somewhere,” Flickner says he’d like to stay at the Gospel Rescue Mission. “They’re nice people doing nice things.”

But Flickner didn’t have to lose his apartment. Niagara Towers managers could have let him stay. Instead, they opted to enforce the apartment complex’s strict drug policy and evicted Flickner for using medical cannabis to treat chronic pain from a 50-year-old spine injury. “It’s gotten steadily more painful,” Flickner told The Buffalo News.

John Flickner is a legal, registered medical cannabis patient in New York. He obtained his medical cannabis recommendation from a physician licensed to issue them. And he purchased his vape pen and cannabis oil from a licensed and regulated medical cannabis dispensary in New York.

Federal law, however, which lists cannabis as a Schedule I controlled substance, says that landlords of federally-assisted housing facilities can deny admission to anyone they believe is using an illegal drug—including state-legalized medical cannabis. When Bill Clinton signed that law in 1998, many interpreted it as requiring landlords to evict tenants suspected of using drugs.

But during the Obama administration, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a memo clarifying that landlords could use their own judgement regarding tenants using legally-prescribed medical cannabis. The Trump administration has issued no further guidance on the policy. In short, landlords can turn away cannabis patients seeking HUD-subsidized housing. But they can choose to evict or not evict current residents who use cannabis. Flickner’s landlordchose to evict him. Unfortunately, the landlord has the legal right to do so.

Niagara Falls Senior Evicted After One Hour Trial

Employees of Niagara Towers discovered Flickner’s medical cannabis use during a June inspection of his apartment. Flickner had left some botanicals he purchased in Canada on his kitchen table. Following policy, the employees notified police. When police arrived, they informed Flickner that he needed official documentation to consume medical cannabis in New York, which he didn’t have at the time. (Flower is not an authorized form of medical cannabis in New York.) But officers declined to arrest him. It took Flickner all of two days to obtain the necessary paperwork, a vaporizer and a few cartridges of cannabis oil. He had been living in Niagara Towers for two years.

Niagara Towers still pressed on with its eviction process, however. When Flickner refused to leave, the property company operating Niagara Towers, Tennessee-based LHP Capital Properties, took Flickner to court. His trial lasted an hour. And his previous cannabis use—prior to obtaining a physician recommendation—became the key piece of evidence during the eviction proceedings. Judge Danielle M. Pestaino signed Flickner’s eviction order on November 29.

Kevin Quinn, an attorney with the Center for Elder Law and Justice in Buffalo, New York who represented Flickner in eviction proceedings, is extremely disappointed management decided to impose the HUD rule. “Why they enforced the rule on a gentleman like him is beyond me,” Quinn told High Times.

The catch, Quinn explained, was Flickner’s obtaining his medical license after the inspection that discovered his cannabis use. But even then, Flickner “used it for medical purposes only, not recreationally, and without causing any interference with other tenants,” Quinn said. “Flickner is an elderly disabled gentleman who relies on it day to day.”

Federal Prohibition Means Cannabis Is Never Completely Legal, Even for Medical Patients

High Times attempted to contact Niagara Towers and LHP Capital Properties. But at publication, neither has responded to our requests for comment. It would be interesting to know how often senior residents in HUD housing face eviction or other consequences for using medical cannabis products that are legal where they live. LHP Capital spokesperson Amy Styles told reporters that the company has a strict no-marijuana policy, regardless of circumstances. LHP Capital operates more than 55 housing facilities across the country, including three HUD-assisted facilities in Western New York. Do seniors know that their state-legal medical cannabis treatments put their living arrangements at risk? Can states do anything to protect them?

Quinn says this is the first time he has come across a case like Flickner’s. But he knows there must be so many other seniors who live in HUD housing who rely on medical cannabis treatments. The problem, however, is that elderly folks aren’t aware of regulations despite what local laws dictate. Many don’t realize that the HUD rules can lead to lease termination, and that the decision to evict falls to the landlord or manager regardless of what state law says.

That was exactly what happened to Flickner. The rule blindsided him. But at least he had legal representation. Many seniors, especially in communities facing affordable housing crises, face eviction proceedings without representation. Many end up having to vacate their homes within 72 hours. One solution, Quinn suggests, is better educating HUD tenants on the risks they face if they take medical cannabis treatments.

TO READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE ON HIGH TIMES, CLICK HERE.

https://hightimes.com/news/78-year-old-man-evicted-using-medical-marijuana/

0 notes

leahwilkinss · 6 years ago

Text

Safety First: 10 Tips for Choosing the Best Above Ground Pool Fence

10 Tips for Choosing the Best Above Ground Pool Fence

Few additions turn your home into an outdoor oasis quite like the addition of an above ground swimming pool.

They’re ideal for transforming a drab backyard into a go-to hangout spot all year round. Yet, while they provide hours of entertainment and good-hearted fun, it’s important to treat them with respect.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 10 people die every day from unintentional drowning. Among children 1-4, most of these drowning occur in home swimming pools.

Though these statistics can be staggering, they shouldn’t steer you away from installing a pool on your premises. They simply drive home the fact that while you’re setting up your pool, you should add safety features, including an above ground pool fence, as well.

Taking this step can help safeguard your pool and ensure that no one wanders in without supervision. However, with so many models on the market, it can be difficult to discern where to start shopping for your pool fence. After all, this is an important, life-saving decision and you want to make sure you get it right.

To this end, today we’re exploring 10 tips to help you choose the best above ground pool fence available. These criteria can help you narrow your selection and find the solution that best meets your needs.

Ready to get started? Let’s go!

1. Take a Walk Around Your Pool

Above ground pools are unique in that their sides are exposed. Your skimmer can be found on the side surface, as can your uprights.

Before looking into a fence, know where each of these elements is located. You want to make sure the design you select won’t interfere with your ability to access and protect these areas.Â

2. Understand Your Local Regulations

Regulations on how high an above ground fence should be will vary by both country and municipality. As such, before installing an above ground pool and associated fencing, it’s best to speak with your local building and zoning departments to get an accurate report on how high your fence will need to be, as well as any other safety specifications.

In most cases, a fence surrounding a pool will need to be at least four feet high, regardless of whether the pool is in-ground or above-ground. Most areas will also mandate that the pool is surrounded by a gate on all four sides rather than leaving one or more sides exposed.

You can double check your local guidelines by state, then contact your representatives to learn more.

3. Remember Gates and Ladders

For your above ground pool fence to be accessible, it must also include a gate. Most areas will require that this gate be self-closing to help prevent the possibility that someone might accidentally leave it open and allow others to enter behind them. Gates should be self-latching, too, for this same purpose.

Above-ground pools are unique in that, along with a gate, they must also include a ladder or a set of steps. This is because the pool itself sits high above the ground, requiring an elevated surface for access.

Your ladders or steps should be at least three inches wide to ensure against slips and falls. If your stairs are not retractable, they too must be gated.

You’ll need to have your steps and ladders checked regularly to make sure they’re still intact and reliable. Depending on your style preference, your ladders and steps can be as ornamental or simple as you want them to be. You may prefer the simplicity of an A-frame ladder, or you may want to invest in a set of grand, drop-in steps.

4. Look for Handrails

You can research safe pool fences all day long, but unless yours comes equipped with a handrail, it will fail to serve its purpose. The reality is that the steps in and around a pool get slippery very quickly as wet feet trample over them. As such, a slick ladder or step can cause someone to lose their footing.

When this happens, they could fall into the pool or onto a nearby surface, neither of which is the desired outcome. Look for sturdy handrails that help balance and steady users. Keep in mind that these aren’t just a nice-to-have feature. Rather, pool fence handrails are often required by local building laws.

5. Ensure Against Footholds and Handholds

When you’re shopping around, you’ll come across myriad pool fencing options. As you peruse them, look for any areas that might offer a foothold or handhold for curious little grabbers.

While you want to assume the presence of a fence alone will be enough to ward off any wanderers, they can offer an exciting adventure for pint-sized daredevils looking to peer out from a higher vantage point.

Can anyone hop on your fence and stay there? Is it designed in such a way that anyone could slip their feet or hands onto the rails, then jump into the pool or the ground below? If so, avoid those design options altogether. Instead, invest in a pool fence with vertical bars that are impossible to climb.

6. Choose a Material

Pool fences come in a range of material and design types, each with its own pros and cons. Some will be sturdier than others while some may offer cost-saving advantages against their counterparts. The five primary types you’ll have to select from including ornamentalÂ aluminum, PVC, wood, mesh, and glass. Let’s review these in more detail.

Ornamental Aluminum

Above ground pool fences crafted in ornamental aluminum are coated in a specialty powder that makes them weather-resistant and long-lasting. As such, this is a popular choice among many homeowners.

While they’re an attractive and durable option, these fences do not offer total privacy as there are spaces between the aluminum slats. Thus, if you’re looking to totally block out the surrounding view, you may want to opt for a different material.

PVC or Vinyl

Second, in durability only after ornamental aluminum, PVC fencing is an ideal addition to your above ground pool fence. This material looks like wood in most cases but is built to withstand the elements and not rot. The PVC is actually a hardened form of plastic vinyl, which allows it to be molded into almost any shape or design you prefer.

You can design and install PVC fencing to be decorative in nature or to serve as a privacy fence, depending on your unique setup.

Wood

Decades ago, wood reigned supreme in the world of pool fencing. It was easy to come by, simple to use and did the job. However, while you can still find many wooden pool fences on the market today, they are less resistant to the weather than other available options. They can also splinter and chip and require routine maintenance to keep them in top shape.

Still, wood is one of the more affordable fencing options and, like PVC, can be crafted into almost any design you prefer. If you’re on a budget and just need a basic fence that does the job, wood will work.

Mesh

Though some areas deem mesh pool fences usable and legal, it’s not the safest pool fence material around. The mesh will fit inside square pieces ofÂ fence framing, though it can easily be destroyed by weather, flying debris or roughhousing. The one upside to this kind of fence is that you can see through it relatively well, though you’re better off sticking to a sturdier and safer alternative.

Glass

If your budget allows, glass pool fencing can be an attractive, albeit costly, addition. These designs work in much the same way as mesh ones do, only the spaces between posts are comprised of glass.

Especially if you’re concerned about blocking the view into or away from your pool, glass fencing offers the ultimate in visibility. However, if you live in a climate that frequently sees severe weather, these can be vulnerable to destruction in heavy winds or otherwise inclement conditions.

7. Look Into Modular Sections and Adapter Kits

As above ground pools come in a variety of shapes and sizes, there is not a one-size-fits-all solution forÂ an above ground pool fence with a gate. In most cases, you will have to buy a separate adapter kit to add modular pieces and other required hardware.

Rather than attempting to make a standard fence work around your pool, you should always take the time to ensure the one you choose is custom-fitted to meet your specifications. Otherwise, you risk leaving even a small section open, making your pool vulnerable to anyone who climbs the ladder and peeks inside.

8. Opt for Professional Installation

While you could gather the necessary tools and accessories and attempt to install your pool fence yourself, it’s a wise move to hire an expert to take care of this step.

Your localÂ swimming pool company will have a team of professionals on staff to take care of the installation process. Going this route gives you peace of mind that every component was attached and secured correctly and that your fence is as safe as possible.

If you do decide to install the fence yourself, be sure to read the step-by-step instructions carefully to ensure you don’t miss a step or leave out an important piece.

9. Schedule Regular Maintenance

Your above ground pool fence is an essential part of your swimming pool installation. To make sure it’s always in safe, working condition, go ahead and establish a regular maintenance plan with your provider. Fences, steps, ladders, and gates should be checked every few months to ensure against cracks, loose joints, fractures, and other damage.

By maintaining an upkeep schedule, you’ll be one step ahead of the game when it comes to keeping your pool area safe, clean and protected.

10. Remember, Safety First

You want an attractive pool fence that offers an ideal amount of both visibility and privacy. While it can be fun to read pool fence reviews and take in all your options, keep in mind that no aesthetic consideration should take the place of a safety one.

For instance, if you invest in an ornamental aluminum fence, make sure that the slats are close together and do not allow even the slightest chance for a toddler to squeeze through. If you opt for a mesh design, make sure the material is sturdy enough that a child can’t rip a hole in it and climb through.

Though it’s never easy to think about a drowning happening on your property, you can help prevent this occurrence by keeping safety top of mind during your search for the perfect above ground pool fence.

Find Your Above Ground Pool Fence Today

Are you ready to turn your landscaping up a notch or two? Do you love the idea of hanging out in your own backyard haven? If so, an above ground pool fence fits the bill in more ways than one.

However, no pool is complete without the addition of a fence around it. Today, homeowners have more fencing options than ever before, and you can find a style that fits your design preferences while still being as safe as possible.

Not sure where to start your search? That’s where we come in.

Our team has done the research and perused the options so you don’t have to. Whether you’re looking into hot tubs, swimming pools or other related accessories, you’ve come to the right spot.

Feel free to browse our product reviews and industry advice for ways to keep yourÂ systems in top condition. Ready to close up your pool for the winter? We’ve put together a list of the best pool covers and safety nets to help you get started!

The post Safety First: 10 Tips for Choosing the Best Above Ground Pool Fence appeared first on HotTubAdvice.

Safety First: 10 Tips for Choosing the Best Above Ground Pool Fence published first on https://hottubadvice.com

0 notes

endenogatai · 6 years ago

Text

Europe is drawing fresh battle lines around the ethics of big data

It’s been just over four months since Europe’s tough new privacy framework came into force. You might believe that little of substance has changed for big tech’s data-hungry smooth operators since then — beyond firing out a wave of privacy policy update spam, and putting up a fresh cluster of consent pop-ups that are just as aggressively keen for your data.

But don’t be fooled. This is the calm before the storm, according to the European Union’s data protection supervisor, Giovanni Buttarelli, who says the law is being systematically flouted on a number of fronts right now — and that enforcement is coming.

“I’m expecting, before the end of the year, concrete results,” he tells TechCrunch, sounding angry on every consumer’s behalf.

Though he chalks up some early wins for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) too, suggesting its 72 hour breach notification requirement is already bearing fruit.

He also points to geopolitical pull, with privacy regulation rising up the political agenda outside Europe — describing, for example, California’s recently passed privacy law, which is not at all popular with tech giants, as having “a lot of similarities to GDPR”; as well as noting “a new appetite for a federal law” in the U.S.

Yet he’s also already looking beyond GDPR — to the wider question of how European regulation needs to keep evolving to respond to platform power and its impacts on people.

Next May, on the anniversary of GDPR coming into force, Buttarelli says he will publish a manifesto for a next-generation framework that envisages active collaboration between Europe’s privacy overseers and antitrust regulators. Which will probably send a shiver down the tech giant spine.

Notably, the Commission’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager — who has shown an appetite to take on big tech, and has so far fined Google twice ($2.7BN for Google Shopping and staggering $5BN for Android), and who is continuing to probe its business on a number of fronts while simultaneously eyeing other platforms’ use of data — is scheduled to give a keynote at an annual privacy commissioners’ conference that Buttarelli is co-hosting in Brussels later this month.

Her presence hints at the potential of joint-working across historically separate regulatory silos that have nonetheless been showing increasingly overlapping concerns of late.

See, for example, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office accusing Facebook of using its size to strong-arm users into handing over data. And the French Competition Authority probing the online ad market — aka Facebook and Google — and identifying a raft of problematic behaviors. Last year the Italian Competition Authority also opened a sector inquiry into big data.

Traditional competition law theories of harm would need to be reworked to accommodate data-based anticompetitive conduct — essentially the idea that data holdings can bestow an unfair competitive advantage if they cannot be matched. Which clearly isn’t the easiest stinging jellyfish to nail to the wall. But Europe’s antitrust regulators are paying increasing mind to big data; looking actively at whether and even how data advantages are exclusionary or exploitative.

In recent years, Vestager has been very public with her concerns about dominant tech platforms and the big data they accrue as a consequence, saying, for example in 2016, that: “If a company’s use of data is so bad for competition that it outweighs the benefits, we may have to step in to restore a level playing field.”

Buttarelli’s belief is that EU privacy regulators will be co-opted into that wider antitrust fight by “supporting and feeding” competition investigations in the future. A future that can be glimpsed right now, with the EC’s antitrust lens swinging around to zoom in on what Amazon is doing with merchant data.

“Europe would like to speak with one voice, not only within data protection but by approaching this issue of digital dividend, monopolies in a better way — not per sectors,” Buttarelli tells TechCrunch.

“Monopolies are quite recent. And therefore once again, as it was the case with social networks, we have been surprised,” he adds, when asked whether the law can hope to keep pace. “And therefore the legal framework has been implemented in a way to do our best but it’s not in my view robust enough to consider all the relevant implications… So there is space for different solutions. But first joint enforcement and better co-operation is key.”

From a regulatory point of view, competition law is hampered by the length of time investigations take. A characteristic of the careful work required to probe and prove out competitive harms that’s nonetheless especially problematic set against the blistering pace of technological innovation and disruption. The law here is very much the polar opposite of ‘move fast and break things’.

But on the privacy front at least, there will be no 12 year wait for the first GDPR enforcements, as Buttarelli notes was the case when Europe’s competition rules were originally set down in 1957’s Treaty of Rome.

He says the newly formed European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which is in charge of applying GDPR consistently across the bloc, is fixed on delivering results “much more quickly”. And so the first enforcements are penciled in for around half a year after GDPR ‘Day 1’.

“I think that people are right to feel more impassioned about enforcement,” he says. “We see awareness and major problems with how the data is treated — which are systemic. There is also a question with regard to the business model, not only compliance culture.

“I’m expecting concrete first results, in terms of implementation, before the end of this year.”

“No blackmailing”

Tens of thousands of consumers have already filed complaints under Europe’s new privacy regime. The GDPR updates the EU’s longstanding data protection rules, bringing proper enforcement for the first time in the form of much larger fines for violations — to prevent privacy being the bit of the law companies felt they could safely ignore.

The EDPB tells us that more than 42,230 complaints have been lodged across the bloc since the regulation began applying, on May 25. The board is made up of the heads of EU Member State’s national data protection agencies, with Buttarelli serving as its current secretariat.

“I did not appreciate the tsunami of legalistic notices landing on the account of millions of users, written in an obscure language, and many of them were entirely useless, and in a borderline even with spamming, to ask for unnecessary agreements with a new privacy policy,” he tells us. “Which, in a few cases, appear to be in full breach of the GDPR — not only in terms of spirit.”

He also professes himself “not surprised” about Facebook’s latest security debacle — describing the massive new data breach the company revealed on Friday as “business as usual” for the tech giant. And indeed for “all the tech giants” — none of whom he believes are making adequate investments in security.

“In terms of security there are much less investments than expected,” he also says of Facebook specifically. “Lot of investments about profiling people, about creating clusters, but much less in preserving the [security] of communications. GDPR is a driver for a change — even with regard to security.”

Asked what systematic violations of the framework he’s seen so far, from his pan-EU oversight position, Buttarelli highlights instances where service operators are relying on consent as their legal basis to collect user data — saying this must allow for a free choice.

Or “no blackmailing”, as he puts it.

Facebook, for example, does not offer any of its users, even its users in Europe, the option to opt out of targeted advertising. Yet it leans on user consent, gathered via dark pattern consent flows of its own design, to sanction its harvesting of personal data — claiming people can just stop using its service if they don’t agree to its ads.

It also claims to be GDPR compliant.

It’s pretty easy to see the disconnect between those two positions.

WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 11: Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill April 11, 2018 in Washington, DC. This is the second day of testimony before Congress by Zuckerberg, 33, after it was reported that 87 million Facebook users had their personal information harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm linked to the Trump campaign. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“In cases in which it is indispensable to build on consent it should be much more than in the past based on exhaustive information; much more details, written in a comprehensive and simple language, accessible to an average user, and it should be really freely given — so no blackmailing,” says Buttarelli, not mentioning any specific tech firms by name as he reels off this list. “It should be really freely revoked, and without expecting that the contract is terminated because of this.

“This is not respectful of at least the spirit of the GDPR and, in a few cases, even of the legal framework.”

His remarks — which chime with what we’ve heard before from privacy experts — suggest the first wave of complaints filed by veteran European data protection campaigner and lawyer, Max Schrems, via his consumer focused data protection non-profit noyb, will bear fruit. And could force tech giants to offer a genuine opt-out of profiling.

The first noyb complaints target so-called ‘forced consent‘, arguing that Facebook; Facebook-owned Instagram; Facebook-owned WhatsApp; and Google’s Android are operating non-compliant consent flows in order to keep processing Europeans’ personal data because they do not offer the aforementioned ‘free choice’ opt-out of data collection.

Schrems also contends that this behavior is additionally problematic because dominant tech giants are gaining an unfair advantage over small businesses — which simply cannot throw their weight around in the same way to get what they want. So that’s another spark being thrown in on the competition front.

Discussing GDPR enforcement generally, Buttarelli confirms he expects to see financial penalties not just investigatory outcomes before the year is out — so once DPAs have worked through the first phase of implementation (and got on top of their rising case loads).

Of course it will be up to local data protection agencies to issue any fines. But the EDPB and Buttarelli are the glue between Europe’s (currently) 28 national data protection agencies — playing a highly influential co-ordinating and steering role to ensure the regulation gets consistently applied.

He doesn’t say exactly where be thinks the first penalties will fall but notes a smorgasbord of issues that are being commonly complained about, saying: “Now we have an obvious trend and even a peak, in terms of complaints; different violations focusing particularly, but not only, on social media; big data breaches; rights like right of access to information held; right to erasure.”

He illustrates his conviction of incoming fines by pointing to the recent example of the ICO’s interim report into Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of Facebook data, in July — when the UK agency said it intended to fine Facebook the maximum possible (just £500k, because the breach took place before GDPR).

A similarly concluded data misuse investigation under GDPR would almost certainly result in much larger fines because the regulation allows for penalties of up to 4% of a company’s annual global turnover. (So in Facebook’s case the maximum suddenly balloons into the billions.)

The GDPR’s article 83 sets out general conditions for calculating fines — saying penalties should be “effective, proportionate and dissuasive”; and they must take into account factors such as whether an infringement was intentional or negligent; the categories of personal data affected; and how co-operative the data controller is as the data supervisor investigates.

For the security breach Facebook disclosed last week the EU’s regulatory oversight process will involve an assessment of how negligent the company was; what response steps it took when it discovered the breach, including how it communicated with data protection authorities and users; and how comprehensively it co-operatives with the DPC’s investigation. (In a not-so-great sign for Facebook the Irish DPC has already criticized its breach notification for lacking detail).

As well as evaluating a data controller’s security measures against GDPR standards, EU regulators can “prescribe additional safeguards”, as Buttarelli puts it. Which means enforcement is much more than just a financial penalty; organizations can be required to change their processes and priorities too.

And that’s why Schrems’ forced consent complaints are so interesting.

Because a fine, even a large one, can be viewed by a company as revenue-heavy as Facebook as just another business cost to suck up as it keeps on truckin’. But GDPR’s follow on enforcement prescriptions could force privacy law breakers to actively reshape their business practices to continue doing business in Europe.

And if the privacy problem with Facebook is that it’s forcing people-tracking ads on everyone, the solution is surely a version of Facebook that does not require users to accept privacy intrusive advertising to use it. Other business models are available, such as subscription.

But ads don’t have to be hostile to privacy. For example it’s possible to display advertising without persistently profiling users — as, for example, pro-privacy search engine DuckDuckGo does. Other startups are exploring privacy-by-design on-device ad-targeting architectures for delivering targeted ads without needing to track users. Alternatives to Facebook’s targeted ads certainly exist — and innovating in lock-step with privacy is clearly possible. Just ask Apple.

So — at least in theory — GDPR could force the social network behemoth to revise its entire business model.

Which would make even a $1.63BN fine the company could face as a result of Friday’s security breach pale into insignificance.

Accelerating ethics

There’s a wrinkle here though. Buttarelli does not sound convinced that GDPR alone will be remedy enough to fix all privacy hostile business models that EU regulators are seeing. Hence his comment about a “question with regard to the business model”.

And also why he’s looking ahead and talking about the need to evolve the regulatory landscape — to enable joint working between traditionally discrete areas of law.

“We need structural remedies to make the digital market fairer for people,” he says. “And therefore this is we’ve been successful in persuading our colleagues of the Board to adopt a position on the intersection of consumer protection, competition rules and data protection. None of the independent regulators’ three areas, not speaking about audio-visual deltas, can succeed in their sort of old fashioned approach.

“We need more interaction, we need more synergies, we need to look to the future of these sectoral legislations.”

People are targeted with content to make them behave in a certain way. To predict but also to react. This is not the kind of democracy we deserve. Giovanni Buttarelli, European Data Protection Supervisor

The challenge posed by the web’s currently dominant privacy-hostile business models is also why, in a parallel track, Europe’s data protection supervisor is actively pushing to accelerate innovation and debate around data ethics — to support efforts to steer markets and business models in, well, a more humanitarian direction.

When we talk he highlights that Sir Tim Berners-Lee will be keynoting at the same European privacy conference where Vestager will appear at — which has an overarching discussion frame of “Debating Ethics: Dignity and Respect in Data Driven Life” as its theme.

Accelerating innovation to support the development of more ethical business models is also clearly the Commission’s underlying hope and aim.

Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, has been increasingly strident in his criticism of how commercial interests have come to dominate the Internet by exploiting people’s personal data, including warning earlier this year that platform power is crushing the web as a force for good.

He has also just left his academic day job to focus on commercializing the pro-privacy, decentralized web platform he’s been building at MIT for years — via a new startup, called Inrupt.

Doubtless he’ll be telling the conference all about that.

“We are focusing on the solutions for the future,” says Buttarelli on ethics. “There is a lot of discussion about people becoming owners of their data, and ‘personal data’, and we call that personal because there’s something to be respected, not traded. And on the contrary we see a lot of inequality in the tech world, and we believe that the legal framework can be of an help. But will not give all the relevant answers to identify what is legally and technically feasible but morally untenable.”

Also just announced as another keynote speaker at the same conference later this month: Apple’s CEO Tim Cook.

In a statement on Cook’s addition to the line-up, Buttarelli writes: “We are delighted that Tim has agreed to speak at the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners. Tim has been a strong voice in the debate around privacy, as the leader of a company which has taken a clear privacy position, we look forward to hearing his perspective. He joins an already superb line up of keynote speakers and panellists who want to be part of a discussion about technology serving humankind.”

So Europe’s big fight to rule the damaging impacts of big data just got another big gun behind it.

Apple CEO Tim Cook looks on during a visit of the shopfitting company Dula that delivers tables for Apple stores worldwide in Vreden, western Germany, on February 7, 2017. (Photo: BERND THISSEN/AFP/Getty Images)

“Question is [how do] we go beyond the simple requirements of confidentiality, security, of data,” Buttarelli continues. “Europe after such a successful step [with GDPR] is now going beyond the lawful and fair accumulation of personal data — we are identifying a new way of assessing market power when the services delivered to individuals are not mediated by a binary. And although competition law is still a powerful instrument for regulation — it was invented to stop companies getting so big — but I think together with our efforts on ethics we would like now Europe to talk about the future of the current dominant business models.

“I’m… concerned about how these companies, in compliance with GDPR in a few cases, may collect as much data as they can. In a few cases openly, in other secretly. They can constantly monitor what people are doing online. They categorize excessively people. They profile them in a way which cannot be contested. So we have in our democracies a lot of national laws in an anti-discrimination mode but now people are to be discriminated depending on how they behave online. So people are targeted with content to make them behave in a certain way. To predict but also to react. This is not the kind of democracy we deserve. This is not our idea.”

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://ift.tt/2zNf9xG via IFTTT

#IFTTT #RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425

0 notes