THREAT TO FREE INFORMATION AND FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.” At a time when internet access is widely available, information is spread around the globe rapidly. This development enables people in various parts of the world to gain access to information faster than ever before imagined. A lot of the information on the net comes free of charge, which allows access regardless of money. However, as everybody is able to provide information more or less anonymously on the net we have to focus on the quality of the information supplied.freedom of information, objectivity, anonimyty, credibility, censorship

Fighting Exclusion From Televised Presidential Debates: Minor-Party Candidates\u27 Standing To Challenge Sponsoring Organizations\u27 Tax-Exempt Status

This Note argues that courts should recognize minor-party presidential candidates\u27 standing to challenge the section 50l(c)(3) tax-exempt status of organizations sponsoring televised debates that exclude minor-party candidates. Part I situates the issue within the context of the Supreme Court\u27s standing jurisprudence and concludes that the validity of a third-party tax-status challenge by an aggrieved minor-party presidential candidate remains an open question. Part II analyzes the Second and District of Columbia Circuits\u27 decisions and concludes that the Second Circuit\u27s approach properly interprets the Supreme Court\u27s standing doctrine and correctly resolves the particular arguments which both courts consider. Part III first demonstrates that the Supreme Court\u27s standing doctrine permits an inquiry into the public interests which granting standing in this context may advance. It then examines political scientists\u27 conclusions about minor parties in U.S. politics and argues that the inherent inequities of our political structure, the importance of media exposure in elections, and the social value of minor-party candidacies support granting standing for minor-party candidates. Part IV explores some of the questions which the U.S. political system will need to address if courts grant standing for minor-party candidates and the plaintiffs eventually win their challenges to debate sponsors\u27 tax exemptions. This Note concludes that courts should grant standing for minor-party presidential candidates to challenge the tax-exempt status of organizations that exclude them from televised debates

Social and Environmental Attributes of Food Products in an Emerging Mass Market : Challenges of Signaling and Consumer Perception, With European Illustrations

This paper focuses on the environmental and ethical attributes of food products and their production processes. These two aspects have been recently recognized and are becoming increasingly important, in terms of signaling and of consumer perception. There are two thematic domains: environmental and social. Within each domain there are two movements. Hence the paper first presents the four movements that have brought to the fore new aspects of food product quality, to wit: (1) aspects of environmental ethics (organic agriculture and integrated agriculture) and (2)social ethics (fair trade and ethical trade). Then it describes how the actors in the movements producers, retailers, NGOs, and governments) are organized and how consumers perceive each of the movements. From the perspective of the actors in the movements themselves, the movements are grouped into two 'actors' philosophies' : a “radical” philosophy (the organic production and fair trade movements that arose in radical opposition to conventional agriculture or unfair trade relations) and a “reformist” philosophy (the integrated agriculture and ethical trade movements that arose as efforts to modify but not radically change conventional agriculture). From the point of view of consumers, the classification of the movements is based on perceptions of the 'domain' of the movements. That is, consumers tend to perceive as a grouping the organic production movement and the integrated agricultural movement, as they both deal with the environment. By contrast, consumers tend to group the fair trade movement and the ethical trade movement, as they both deal essentially with social ethics. Recently, key players such as large retailers and agribusinesses have adopted as part of their overall quality assurance programs both the environmental and the ethical attributes. Their involvement in and adoption of the goals of the movements have, however, generated tensions and conflicts, in particular within the radical movements, because of concerns of cooptation. The paper identifies challenges for those promoting food products with environmental and social/ethical attributes to communicate coherent signals to consumers at this crucial moment of an emerging mass market for these products.Consumer perception, Ethical trade, Fair trade, Integrated agriculture, Organic agriculture, Organization, Quality signals

Blockchain applications for a sustainable future

openLa tecnologia Blockchain promette di rivoluzionare il controllo e la gestione della catena produttiva, riducendo gli sprechi e l'impronta ecologica dei processi su cui viene applicata. Nonostante ciò, i principali sistemi che attualmente si basano su di essa - come ad esempio Ethereum per gli NFT - richiedono un consumo energetico talmente ampio da non risultare sostenibile nel futuro prossimo. L'obiettivo dell'elaborato è quindi quello di cercare un punto di convergenza tra le due facce della medaglia, fornendo una visione responsabile riguardo applicazioni future, che permetta di conciliare progresso tecnologico e sostenibilità economica e ambientale.The Blockchain technology promises to revolutionize the administration and control of the productive chain, reducing waste and carbon footprint of the processes on which it is applied. Nevertheless, the most relevant systems that are currently based on it - such as Ethereum for the NFT - require a huge energetic consumption, so that is does not seem to be sustainable in the future. The aim of this work is to find a point of contact between the two sides of the coin, presenting a responsible sight on possible future applications, that allows to conciliate technological progress with environmental and economic sustainability

Conversations on a probable future: interview with Beatrice Fazi

No description supplie

Implementation of a blockchain-based on land registration and control management system. case of North Kivu province in DRC.

This project proposes the feasibility of a blockchain-based registration and control management system within the cadastral service in the province of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Given that blockchain has attracted considerable attention because of its ability to be decentralized, and immutable, a new and experimental technology applicable in all fields. It has helped us within this service to provide a solution for the problems that plague the management and control of the registration of land files, the sale and purchase of land, as well as the transfer after sales or purchases. This research focused on how blockchain can be used to facilitate management to enable system users to be at the center of management by being the manager of their own land information. The solution proposed in this research supports all aspects related to the security, transparency, availability, access, sharing consent or validation of information that the user deems useful to validate

Geochemical wolframite fingerprinting - the likelihood ratio approach for laser ablation ICP-MS data

Wolframite has been specified as a ‘conflict mineral’ by a U.S. Government Act, which obliges companies that use these minerals to report their origin. Minerals originating from conflict regions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo shall be excluded from the market as their illegal mining, trading, and taxation are supposed to fuel ongoing violent conflicts. The German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) developed a geochemical fingerprinting method for wolframite based on laser ablation inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. Concentrations of 46 elements in about 5300 wolframite grains from 64 mines were determined. The issue of verifying the declared origins of the wolframite samples may be framed as a forensic problem by considering two contrasting hypotheses: the examined sample and a sample collected from the declared mine originate from the same mine (H 1 ), and the two samples come from different mines (H 2 ). The solution is found using the likelihood ratio (LR) theory. On account of the multidimensionality, the lack of normal distribution of data within each sample, and the huge within-sample dispersion in relation to the dispersion between samples, the classic LR models had to be modified. Robust principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis were used to characterize samples. The similarity of two samples was expressed by Kolmogorov-Smirnov distances, which were interpreted in view of H 1 and H 2 hypotheses within the LR framework. The performance of the models, controlled by the levels of incorrect responses and the empirical cross entropy, demonstrated that the proposed LR models are successful in verifying the authenticity of the wolframite samples