Silence of the Spam: Improving the CAN-SPAM Act by Including an Expanded Private Cause of Action

In the last decade, email spam has become more than just an annoyance for email users. Unsolicited messages now comprise more than 95 percent of all email sent worldwide. This costs US businesses billions of dollars in lost productivity each year. The US Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to regulate the spam industry. Unfortunately, data show that spam only increased since the Act\u27s passage. Part of the reason for this failure is that the Act only authorizes the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, and Internet Service Providers to bring action under its provisions. Each of these authorized entities either lacks the incentive or the resources to adequately enforce the Act, resulting in little to no reduction of spam. As a result, email recipients--not spammers--bear the cost of spam. This Note argues that the Act should incorporate an expanded private cause of action for email recipients, thereby increasing the enforcement level. This will deter spam prospectively by shifting the cost of unsolicited email from the recipient onto the sender

Lessons learned and study results from HIVCore, an HIV implementation science initiative

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138261/1/jia21261.pd

Three Pricing Policies for a Multi-Product Multi-National Company

A price leader must formulate list prices every time he introduces a new product line (fairly frequently in a technologically developing industry). This is not easy. When the company is multi-national, pricing policy becomes further complicated by the issues of centralization versus autonomy of the national subsidiaries, and three pricing schemes are encountered in practice. Scheme 1. The price of an item is the same around the world, except that the customers absorb freight plus import duty. Very simple price coordination and auditing results from this policy. Scheme 2. National prices for the line equal an optimally determined national weighting factor multiplied by a set of benchmark prices. Scheme 3. The subsidiaries can take advantage of local competitive climates with no fixed requirement that prices be coordinated across the nations. For each pricing scheme the overall profit equals the model profit minus administrative costs. The three schemes are sequenced in order of their model profits, which is also their likely administrative cost sequence. We shall compute their comparative model profitabilities so as to have bonds against which to gauge administrative costs. A base case is presupposed. Adjustments to prices and to marketing budgets induce changes in the quantity sold, and hence in the production cost. The profit function is approximated as quadratic in the control variables of price and marketing budget, so that optimal adjustments can be calculated by little more than inverting a partitioned matrix.

Generalized Networks, Generalized Upper Bounding and Decomposition of the Convex Simplex Method

If the constraint matrix of a linear program has special structure it may be possible to speed computation. Techniques have been developed to take advantage of such special structures as generalized networks, generalized upper bounding, and decomposition. For these matrix structures, it is shown in this paper how to extend the techniques to Zangwill's mathematical programming algorithm, the convex simplex method.

Maneuvering Liquid Assets in a Multi-National Company: Formulation and Deterministic Solution Procedures

Over a finite horizon each national subsidiary of a multi-national company can be forecast to be a net source or sink of funds. Each of these subsidiaries in each year is considered to be the node of a network; funds flow along the directed arcs connecting the nodes. Liquid assets carried by the subsidiaries on the arcs between time periods earn interest minus adjustments for expected devaluations. In each time period a flow of funds between each pair of subsidiaries can be achieved by manipulating transfer prices and managerial fees, by making short term intersubsidiary loans, and by paying dividends up the intersubsidiary ownership tree. The costs and constraints on these flows are outlined with particular attention given to the IRC Subpart F regulations of the U.S. 1962 Revenue Act, and to the 1968 regulations of the Office of Foreign Direct Investment. It is shown to be extremely important that subsidiary dollar accounts count toward the compensating balance requirements of a U.S. bank, and it is also shown that there are benefits to a global tax consolidation under Subpart F. The problem can be solved as a generalized network (weighted distribution problem). This avoids the need to guess at the average discount rate if it is to be solved as an ordinary network.