The new regime for international electronic contracting

This paper analyses the most important provisions of the Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts adopted last year by the United Nations General Assembly. This treaty is the first international agreement drafted specifically for international electronic commerce. Although it is not binding yet, it is important for Internet merchants to know what changes does it bring

Intellectual Property Law versus Customs and Values of the Internet Community

The emergence of the Internet has not only enabled widespread copying of digitized music, videos and information but has also facilitated sharing of these resources. Despite the fact that international conventions grant authors and other right holders a number of exclusive rights including the right of reproduction and the right of distribution of their works, Internet community seems to follow a distinct set of norms. The objective of this paper is to present the examples of common practices developed by Internet companies and users in the area of intellectual property. The norms of Internet users are so widespread in the international electronic commerce that they could serve as the basis for adjudicating disputes in the online world and be regarded as reflecting the values of Internet community. Governments could utilize the knowledge of Internet practices to supplement national and international regulation of electronic commerce. The knowledge of electronic commerce customs could thus enhance Internet-related legislation and make it better adjusted to the needs of the knowledge-based economy

Convention on E-Contracting: The Rise of International Law of Electronic Commerce?

On 23 November 2005 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a new Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts. The Convention on e-contracting is the most important and long awaited development in international electronic commerce law. This paper analyses the most important provisions of this convention and its potential impact on global electronic commerce. The new Convention aims to enhance legal certainty and commercial predictability of international contracts where electronic forms of communication are used. Being primarily concerned with the formation of electronic contracts, it recognizes the value of electronic communications and modernizes the terminology of older conventions to embrace the impact of digital technologies. Another advantage of the Convention is its broad scope of application as it goes beyond sale of goods and covers trade in services and information. It also confirms widely recognized principles such as that of functional equivalency or irrelevancy of the geographical location of information systems. However, it also has certain shortcomings. It does not deal with important areas of electronic commerce such as B2C e-commerce or online financial transactions. Furthermore, many provisions are of general nature and hence may actually introduce more legal uncertainty than predictability. In addition, the Convention is not binding yet. The knowledge of potential pros and cons of the Convention can become very useful for any businessmen engaged in global electronic commerce

Technical, Automatic and Passive: Liability of Search Engines for Hosting Infringing Content in the Light of the Google Ruling

The present contribution discusses the latest ruling of the European Court of Justice in the case of Google, which may have deeper consequences for advertisers relying on AdWords service, as well as for providers of similar services around the globe. The Court ruling may turn out to be even more important for Web 2.0 service providers as it seems to have opened the possibility of applying for a legal protection under Article 14 of the Ecommerce Directive. European judges made it clear that sponsored links services are information society services and that they may fall under the sphere of application of hosting safe haven provided that their activities are of technical, automatic and passive nature understood as a lack of knowledge or control over the data stored. This statement is yet to be applied by French courts that will have to establish whether Google AdWords service is really neutral and hence deserves a special legal treatment

Towards a Supranational Internet Law

Internet commerce continues to flourish despite lack of predictable International legal framework. This articleproposes the concept of autonomous Internet law based on the notion of Internet lex mercatoria. Although theidea of autonomous cyberspace law is not new, so far no theory of sources was proposed. The presentcontribution offers such theory and briefly discusses them. Finally, the article discusses potential pros and consof the proposed framework

Bringing numerous methods for expression and promoter analysis to a public cloud computing service

Every year, a large number of novel algorithms are introduced to the scientific community for a myriad of applications, but using these across different research groups is often troublesome, due to suboptimal implementations and specific dependency requirements. This does not have to be the case, as public cloud computing services can easily house tractable implementations within self-contained dependency environments, making the methods easily accessible to a wider public. We have taken 14 popular methods, the majority related to expression data or promoter analysis, developed these up to a good implementation standard and housed the tools in isolated Docker containers which we integrated into the CyVerse Discovery Environment, making these easily usable for a wide community as part of the CyVerse UK project

Investigating the Atmospheric Mass Loss of the Kepler-105 Planets Straddling the Radius Gap

An intriguing pattern among exoplanets is the lack of detected planets between approximately $1.5$ R$_\oplus$ and $2.0$ R$_\oplus$. One proposed explanation for this "radius gap" is the photoevaporation of planetary atmospheres, a theory that can be tested by studying individual planetary systems. Kepler-105 is an ideal system for such testing due to the ordering and sizes of its planets. Kepler-105 is a sun-like star that hosts two planets straddling the radius gap in a rare architecture with the larger planet closer to the host star ($R_b = 2.53\pm0.07$ R$_\oplus$, $P_b = 5.41$ days, $R_c = 1.44\pm0.04$ R$_\oplus$, $P_c = 7.13$ days). If photoevaporation sculpted the atmospheres of these planets, then Kepler-105b would need to be much more massive than Kepler-105c to retain its atmosphere, given its closer proximity to the host star. To test this hypothesis, we simultaneously analyzed radial velocities (RVs) and transit timing variations (TTVs) of the Kepler-105 system, measuring disparate masses of $M_b = 10.8\pm2.3$ M$_\oplus$ ($\rho_b = 0.97\pm0.22$ g cm$^{-3}$) and $M_c = 5.6\pm1.2$ M$_\oplus$ ($\rho_c = 2.64\pm0.61$ g cm$^{-3}$). Based on these masses, the difference in gas envelope content of the Kepler-105 planets could be entirely due to photoevaporation (in 76\% of scenarios), although other mechanisms like core-powered mass loss could have played a role for some planet albedos.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Mapping interindividual dynamics of innate immune response at single-cell resolution

Common genetic variants across individuals modulate the cellular response to pathogens and are implicated in diverse immune pathologies, yet how they dynamically alter the response upon infection is not well understood. Here, we triggered antiviral responses in human fibroblasts from 68 healthy donors, and profiled tens of thousands of cells using single-cell RNA-sequencing. We developed GASPACHO (GAuSsian Processes for Association mapping leveraging Cell HeterOgeneity), a statistical approach designed to identify nonlinear dynamic genetic effects across transcriptional trajectories of cells. This approach identified 1,275 expression quantitative trait loci (local false discovery rate 10%) that manifested during the responses, many of which were colocalized with susceptibility loci identified by genome-wide association studies of infectious and autoimmune diseases, including the OAS1 splicing quantitative trait locus in a COVID-19 susceptibility locus. In summary, our analytical approach provides a unique framework for delineation of the genetic variants that shape a wide spectrum of transcriptional responses at single-cell resolution