Financial crime in the twenty-first century: the rise of the virtual collar criminal

This chapter introduces the phenomenon of virtual collar crime, that is quintessentially white collar crimes that are perpetrated entirely in cyberspace. Trust, trust dependency, high skill base criminals and opportunity zones were, and are, the hallmarks of white collar crime. The emerging paradigm of virtual collar crimes negates the requirement that perpetrators be highly skilled. Computer sagacity is no longer the sine qua non for cybercriminals - the phenomenon of 'Crime as a Service' has outsourced the skill requirement to third party providers of the required technological knowhow. Alongside the cascading down of such technical knowledge, twenty-first century society has driven headlong down the information superhighway, with hardly any area of human activity left unexposed to the effects of the ether. This perfect storm of increased virtuality and democratisation of online crime poses immense challenges to the entire twenty-first century society substratum, risking the future ability and desire of humans to interact with each other, have mutual trust and respect for one another and to have faith in established governmental institutions, commercial corporations and law enforcement. Legal systems must ensure that lives lived virtually are only exposed to an acceptable level of risk

B2B e-marketplaces : a study of the current industry

The subsequent work is a study of B2B e-marketplaces. These trading platforms are a relatively new creation, having their birth in the ever more widespread adoption of Internet technology throughout business. The implementation of electronic transactions in place of the traditional paper-based order process offers substantial cost reductions to companies. Once a company has decided on changing the procurement process to the electronic medium however it is presented with a multitude of technical incompatible problems to reach all of its trading partners, as there currently exists no technical standard for business transactions. Thus there is an opportunity for an intermediary, a platform where a myriad of companies can ‘virtually’ congregate to trade, this marketplace being accessed through an easy to use Web site. The e-marketplace may generate revenue in part by extracting a fee for each transaction conducted across its platform. This creates a dilemma, the creation of a trading platform is not such a feat that it is beyond large companies. Indeed the transaction fees charged by e-marketplaces compound the desire of companies to create their own platforms. Such private e-marketplaces are appearing, built on proprietary technologies and inciting concerns of fair-trading law infringements. The independent e-marketplace built to service an entire industry must offer more to potential users than a company could provide for itself. It achieves this through being neutral and open to all industry members, highly transparent in operation and explicit in its integrity. Impossible for company-created and therefore biased platforms, the independent platform can create a Virtual Community, supporting networking throughout an industry. Rather than monetary profits for the owners of the platform, the true value of the e-marketplace lies in the use of information to manage inventory, saving large amounts of money usually trapped in stock and in striking redesigns of workflow.The subsequent work is a study of B2B e-marketplaces. These trading platforms are a relatively new creation, having their birth in the ever more widespread adoption of Internet technology throughout business. The implementation of electronic transactions in place of the traditional paper-based order process offers substantial cost reductions to companies. Once a company has decided on changing the procurement process to the electronic medium however it is presented with a multitude of technical incompatible problems to reach all of its trading partners, as there currently exists no technical standard for business transactions. Thus there is an opportunity for an intermediary, a platform where a myriad of companies can ‘virtually’ congregate to trade, this marketplace being accessed through an easy to use Web site. The e-marketplace may generate revenue in part by extracting a fee for each transaction conducted across its platform. This creates a dilemma, the creation of a trading platform is not such a feat that it is beyond large companies. Indeed the transaction fees charged by e-marketplaces compound the desire of companies to create their own platforms. Such private e-marketplaces are appearing, built on proprietary technologies and inciting concerns of fair-trading law infringements. The independent e-marketplace built to service an entire industry must offer more to potential users than a company could provide for itself. It achieves this through being neutral and open to all industry members, highly transparent in operation and explicit in its integrity. Impossible for company-created and therefore biased platforms, the independent platform can create a Virtual Community, supporting networking throughout an industry. Rather than monetary profits for the owners of the platform, the true value of the e-marketplace lies in the use of information to manage inventory, saving large amounts of money usually trapped in stock and in striking redesigns of workflow

The Appeal Of Lemons: Appearance And Meaning In Mid Seventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings

In the seventeenth century, Dutch artists produced over a quarter-million paintings that reflected a thriving global market and socio-cultural responses to prosperity. Although markets overflowed with new commodities depicted in paintings, the lemon held a prominent place. Despite increasing art historical interest in the specific elements of Dutch paintings, the lemon has received little scholarly attention. This thesis explores the prevalence of lemons in seventeenth-century still life and genre paintings and argues that their recurrent presence indicates the multivalent significance of lemons for both viewer and artist through three levels of meaning. The representations of lemons describe their numerous functions: they represent market and culinary practices, they are objects that convey interest in Greek mythology and Protestant moral values, and they reflect interest in vision and perception. “Reading” lemons in specific visual contexts through the lens of contemporary treatises offers viewers insight into how the Dutch saw and made meaning.Master of Art

Gothic visions of classical architecture in Hablot Knight Browne’s “dark” illustrations for the novels of Charles Dickens

In the early gothic literature of the eighteenth century danger lurked in the darkness beneath the pointed arches of gothic buildings. During the nineteenth century there was a progressive, although never complete, dislocation of gothic literary readings from gothic architecture. This article explores a phase in that development through discussion of a series of ‘dark’ illustrations produced by Hablot Knight Browne to illustrate novels by Charles Dickens. These show the way in which the rounded arches of neo-classical architecture were depicted in the mid-nineteenth century as locales of oppression and obscurity. Such depictions acted, in an age of political and moral reform, to critique the values of the system of power and authority that such architecture represented