Regulating Non-territorial Commercial Environments in Territorial-based Legal Systems

The purpose of the following work is the identification and analysis of the legal and technological challenges that transnational electronic commerce carried out over open computermediated networks presents to legal systems based on territorial principles in order to delineate global and systematic solutions to this new non-territorial commercial environment. A possible global, systematic and technologically oriented legal solution will create a new commercial environment safer for consumers, more predictable for businesses and with equal opportunities of access and growth for all countries

The art of online arbitrage: essential practices for third-party sellers

The topic of arbitrage is an essential concept in the financial world. It involves taking advantage of price discrepancies for an asset or security across different markets. The emerging third-party retail and online e-commerce arbitrage sellers industry is growing and becoming a popular income source for many individuals. While there is various research on arbitrage and its impact on the economy, there is scant literature on third-party retail e-commerce arbitrage selling. The goal of this research is to build upon existing scholarly work by examining optimal methods, tactics, and obstacles encountered by e-commerce arbitrage sellers who operate through third-party retail platforms. A phenomenological methodology was employed to capture the firsthand experiences of seasoned professionals in the field. Twelve third-party e-commerce sellers who met inclusion criteria were interviewed and asked 11 interview questions designed to elicit detailed and nuanced answers. Thematic analysis was employed to code and categorize the interview data. Forty-nine overarching themes were identified and condensed to create the ACES Framework, which can be used as a guide for success in third-party retail e-commerce arbitrage selling

The Regulation of New Electronic Payment Services in China

PhDDue to the lack of efficient offline payment services for small value payment, and along with the booming of the Internet and telecommunications technologies, new electronic payment services and instruments are becoming increasingly popular and important in the first and second decades of the 21 century in China’s electronic commerce economy. The new electronic payment instruments, which primarily include Internet third party payment and virtual currency, are the subjects of research in this thesis. This thesis focuses on electronic payment law relating to the Internet, and the e-payment law which has been altered substantially by the Internet, rather than focusing on a comprehensive law of payment, clearance and settlement, or traditional mechanisms of payment, such as negotiable instruments and electronic funds transfers that occurs only within the intranet of closed banking systems. Although the new electronic payment instruments cannot escape from the influence of the traditional payment, and new payment instruments are based upon the traditional one both in technological infrastructure and in legal framework, the new electronic payment instruments do possess their own special features in technology, business models and in law. On this regard, readers might be asking why the author did not use the topic of “Internet Payment” or “online payment” instead of “new electronic payment” for the title of the thesis. The answer is because in China, telephone payment, along with Internet payment should be collectively considered as new electronic payment tools, and therefore, it is too narrow to just use the term “Internet Payment”. Also, the word “online” is, somewhat, a misleading word, and the author tries to specify in most cases whether it is an “Internet” or a “mobile network” or “landlines” or any other forms of networks in the following analysis when the concept of “online” has to be referred to. On the other hand, it is a truth that, among those new electronic payment instruments, it is the Internet that has been shaking and reshaping the infrastructure framework of payment, clearance and settlement; and telephone payment as well as mobile payment, to a great extent, are relying on the Internet. Therefore, Internet-related payment lies at the heart of the thesis. Furthermore, in China, new electronic payment instruments are largely created and facilitated through non-bank Internet third party payment providers and virtual currency, These two types of new electronic payment services possess enormous scale and are developing in a fast speed. Therefore, this thesis will treat the law on non-bank Internet third party payment platform providers and virtual currency as two crucial points to discuss.1 1.2 Research Questions The hypothesis of the thesis is that legal issues arising from new electronic payment services, which heavily rely on and is substantially attached to the Internet, are different from legal issues pertaining to traditional electronic payment services which are primarily intra-bank or inter-bank related. For example, in the Internet third party payment system (see Chapter 4 of the thesis), non-bank intermediaries are involved which is outside the regulatory framework of the traditional banking and payment system; also for example, in the virtual currency system (see Chapter 5 & 6 of the thesis), money is not issued by governments and denominated into any national legitimate currencies such as Renminbi in China, instead, money is issued by private Internet companies and denominated into currencies of those private companies. Thus, there are a number of legal questions to be considered: how is the Internet third party payment being regulated in China? What are the key issues in regulating the Internet third party payment? Is the current regulation appropriate? How to regulate the Internet games virtual currency in China? How is the Internet third party payment and virtual currency regulated in the European Union? Are there any lessons that China may learn from the European Union? In the thesis, the author examines these important legal issues relating to new electronic payment in detail, evaluate current existing regulations both in China and in the EU/UK, and propose specific regulatory approaches and measures for China

Development of an intelligent e-commerce assurance model to promote trust in online shopping environment

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) markets provide benefits for both buyers and sellers; however, because of cyber security risks consumers are reluctant to transact online. Trust in e-commerce is paramount for adoption. Trust as a subject for research has been a term considered in depth by numerous researchers in various fields of study, including psychology and information technology. Various models have been developed in e-commerce to alleviate consumer fears, thus promoting trust in online environments. Third-party web seals and online scanning tools are some of the existing models used in e-commerce environments, but they have some deficiencies, e.g. failure to incorporate compliance, which need to be addressed. This research proposes an e-commerce assurance model for safe online shopping. The machine learning model is called the Page ranking analytical hierarchy process (PRAHP). PRAHP builds complementary strengths of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and Page ranking (PR) techniques to evaluate the trustworthiness of web attributes. The attributes that are assessed are Adaptive legislation, Adaptive International Organisation for Standardisation Standards, Availability, Policy and Advanced Security login. The attributes were selected based on the literature reviewed from accredited journals and some of the reputable e-commerce websites. PRAHP’s paradigms were evaluated extensively through detailed experiments on business-to-business, business-to-consumer, cloud-based and general e-commerce websites. The results of the assessments were validated by customer inputs regarding the website. The reliability and robustness of PRAHP was tested by varying the damping factor and the inbound links. In all the experiments, the results revealed that the model provides reliable results to guide customers in making informed purchasing decisions. The research also reveals hidden e-commerce topics that have not received attention, which generates knowledge and opens research questions for future researchers. These ultimately made significant contributions in e-commerce assurance, in areas such as security and compliance through the fusing of AHP and PR, integrated into a decision table for alleviating trustworthiness anxiety in various e-commerce transacting partners, e-commerce platforms and markets.College of Engineering, Science and TechnologyD. Phil. Information System

New Business Models for the Reuse of Secondary Resources from WEEEs

This open access book summarizes research being pursued within the FENIX project, funded by the EU community under the H2020 programme, the goal of which is to design a new product service paradigm able to promote innovative business models, to open added value to the vessels and to create new market segments. It experiments and validates its approach on three new concepts of added-value specialized vessels able to run requested services for several maritime sectors in the most effective, efficient, economic valuable and eco-friendly way. The three vessels share the same lean design methodology, IoT tools and HPC simulation strategy: a lean fact-based design model approach, which combines real operative data at sea with lean methodology, to support the development and implementation of the vessel concepts; IT customized tools to enable the acquisition, processing and usage of on board and local weather data, through an IoT platform, to provide business services to different stakeholders; HPC simulation, providing a virtual towing tank environment, for early vessel design improvement and testing. The book demonstrates that an integrated LCC analysis and LCC strategy to guarantee sustainability to vessels concepts and the proper environmental attention inside the maritime industry

Reform of the Iraqi Private International Law on Transnational Online Contracting: Lessons from the EU and the USA

Online contracting has witnessed some remarkable developments since the internet became a tool for commerce. Mainly in Iraq, such increased practices of online contracting in the cross-border context have not been accompanied with a parallel development in the law. Against this background, this thesis argues that certain rules found in contracting theory and conflict of laws, especially in the Iraqi law, are not adequate enough to govern the legal obligations and disputes arising out of concluding online contracts on websites. A comparative analysis of the legal systems in three different jurisdictions will be used to consider the issues in this thesis: the EU, the US, and Iraq. The rationale behind choosing the aforementioned jurisdictions was to evaluate how successfully each of these jurisdictions have been in dealing with online contracting cases and disputes. Furthermore, the ultimate goal is to examine the possibility of adopting the harmonised laws of the EU and the courts-based approach of the US in proposing a proper reform of Iraqi law in the context of jurisdiction and applicable law matters. In the EU, although substantial harmonisation of rules has been implemented by the European legislature to ensure an effective application of the rules governing contractual obligations in both offline and online practices, some rules are still questionable in terms of their application to internet activities. In the US, despite the fact that courts have been challenged by an abundant number of online contracting cases, the application of US personal jurisdiction rules and the validity and enforceability of online choice of court and law agreements remain unsettled. In Iraq, the application of certain rules of traditional conflict of laws is outdated and the rules are not fit to govern the disputes arising out of online contracts concluded on websites. This thesis concludes that certain reforms of the law, especially Iraqi law, should be more realistic, feasible and appropriate for governing the online contracting process rather than proposing new specific rules for on-line transactions. More specifically, Iraqi legislature should pay more attention to update the Electronic Signature and Transactions Act (IESTA) to provide more legal certainty for contracts concluded on websites. Furthermore, jurisdiction and applicable law rules laid down in articles 14, 15 and 25 of the Civil Code should be also reformed taking into account the special characteristics of the contracting process over the internet

New Business Models for the Reuse of Secondary Resources from WEEEs

This open access book summarizes research being pursued within the FENIX project, funded by the EU community under the H2020 programme, the goal of which is to design a new product service paradigm able to promote innovative business models, to open added value to the vessels and to create new market segments. It experiments and validates its approach on three new concepts of added-value specialized vessels able to run requested services for several maritime sectors in the most effective, efficient, economic valuable and eco-friendly way. The three vessels share the same lean design methodology, IoT tools and HPC simulation strategy: a lean fact-based design model approach, which combines real operative data at sea with lean methodology, to support the development and implementation of the vessel concepts; IT customized tools to enable the acquisition, processing and usage of on board and local weather data, through an IoT platform, to provide business services to different stakeholders; HPC simulation, providing a virtual towing tank environment, for early vessel design improvement and testing. The book demonstrates that an integrated LCC analysis and LCC strategy to guarantee sustainability to vessels concepts and the proper environmental attention inside the maritime industry

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse