Gatekeeping the Gatekeepers: The Need for a Licensing Requirement for Crowdfunding Portals in the Wake of the \u3cem\u3eDreamFunded\u3c/em\u3e Decision

Most people are familiar with crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter and GoFundMe—sites that allow users to part with their money in exchange for products or donate their capital to organizations they believe in. However, these sites have one trait in common: they do not offer contributors equity or a promise for future profits. For a long time, selling equity meant complying with the costly requirements of federal securities laws, which was cost-prohibitive for many small businesses; it was illegal for businesses to offer equity over a site in the way businesses on Kickstarter offered products. The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act changed that. Small businesses, initially precluded from raising capital through the promise of equity, could do so now. However, the passage of the JOBS Act came with a number of requirements for businesses trying to sell equity via crowdfunding. In particular, these businesses could not offer their equity through just any Internet site. They had to do so through a registered intermediary—a gatekeeper to the equity crowdfunding scene. These intermediaries came in two types: broker-dealers (a familiar party in securities law) and a new statutorily created entity called a “funding portal.” Funding portals have many requirements imposed on them, but unlike broker-dealers, they are not required to be licensed to act as an intermediary. The absence of a licensing requirement for funding portals is problematic. The first litigated case involving a funding portal, Department of Enforcement v. DreamFunded Marketplace, LLC, presented that the lack of a licensing requirement threatens the twin purposes of the JOBS Act: capital formation and investor protection

Geospatial data analysis in Russia’s geoweb

The chapter examines the role of geospatial data in Russia’s online ecosystem. Facilitated by the rise of geographic information systems and user-generated content, the distribution of geospatial data has blurred the line between physical spaces and their virtual representations. The chapter discusses different sources of these data available for Digital Russian Studies (e.g., social data and crowdsourced databases) together with the novel techniques for extracting geolocation from various data formats (e.g., textual documents and images). It also scrutinizes different ways of using these data, varying from mapping the spatial distribution of social and political phenomena to investigating the use of geotag data for cultural practices’ digitization to exploring the use of geoweb for narrating individual and collective identities online

Phishing Attacks: A Security Challenge for University Students Studying Remotely

The emergence of the deadly global respiratory coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in 2019 claimed many lives and altered the way people live and behave as well as how companies operated. Considerable pressure was exerted on Institutions of Higher Learning (universities) to salvage the academic projects through the process of business model reconfiguration. Students were required to study remotely and were, therefore, exposed to phishing and scamming cyber-attacks. The effects of these attacks were examined in this study with the support of literature and empirical research leading to appropriate recommendations being proposed. Data were obtained through semi-structured interviews from students at a selected public-funded university. Atlas.Ti was used for data analysis to identify usable and sensible themes. The study established that students were aware of the factors that exposed them to phishing and scamming attacks but lacked the skills to identify such attacks before becoming victims

Simple identification tools in FishBase

Simple identification tools for fish species were included in the FishBase information system from its inception. Early tools made use of the relational model and characters like fin ray meristics. Soon pictures and drawings were added as a further help, similar to a field guide. Later came the computerization of existing dichotomous keys, again in combination with pictures and other information, and the ability to restrict possible species by country, area, or taxonomic group. Today, www.FishBase.org offers four different ways to identify species. This paper describes these tools with their advantages and disadvantages, and suggests various options for further development. It explores the possibility of a holistic and integrated computeraided strategy