Globalization and regulatory change: The interplay of laws and technologies in E-commerce in Southeast Asia

Electronic commerce has brought about business and technological changes globally, and these global changes have given rise to major legal reforms across nations. In the fast-changing global digital economy, states need strategies to maintain competitiveness of their markets while simultaneously ensuring the secure and effective use of technologies involved in conducting electronic transactions. This paper examines how the use and recognition of electronic signatures are regulated in Southeast Asia – the region that has shown the most significant growth in global e-commerce in past few years. Based on a comparative analysis of the laws of four representative ASEAN member states – namely Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam, this paper argues that there is a regional trend towards adopting more liberal and technology-neutral standards for electronic signatures. Electronic signature regulation in Southeast Asia is now built upon limited technological neutrality (or the so-called “two-tiered” approach) as a shared regulatory understanding, but this approach is operationalized differently in each state due to distinctive national contexts. Within the common legal framework, each state has developed its own system of control and management with respect to higher-level signatures (using advanced technologies). The principle of technological neutrality, a concept originally developed for the regulation of technologies in response to the liberalization of telecommunications market, has been the central theme of discussions on the e-transactions policy-making scene. As the author shows, in the process through which states localize the global standards of technological neutrality, ASEAN as a vehicle of regulatory change has played an essential role in translating this principle to the national context.     

China's new regulatory regime tailored for the sharing economy: The case of Uber under Chinese local government regulation in comparison to the EU,US, and the UK

Although Uber's arrival in China has resulted in disruptive competition for incumbent taxi companies, it offers an attractive alternative in China's supply-demand-imbalanced urban passenger transport system. China's regulatory regime for Uber has evolved in three stages: from the regulatory vacuum prior to 2015 to its official legalization in 2015–2016, and the enactment of numerous local regulations in 2016, with specific and more demanding requirements for Uber. This policy is a part of the Chinese approach to the gradual liberalization of the urban passenger transport market. Policymakers should consider ‘fair competition’ as the guiding principle to balance the interests of sharing firms and incumbent service providers, as well as between different sharing firms. The core value of this principle lies in the benefits it provides for consumers and the way it engenders a pro-competitive market environment. The labor protection arrangements for sharing firms’ laborers should be more flexible and diversified. In order to recognize whether an Uber-Driver is an employee or independent contractor, a new standard taking into account a range of factors should be established through collective negotiations between the participants of the sharing economy, and dialogues between members of the judiciary, academics, and the policymakers. Further, consumer protection law and personal data protection provisions should apply when sharing firms misuse their distinctive algorithmic management model to compete unfairly to the detriment of consumers and other users. Ex ante regulatory measures designed to protect the personal data of users should be introduced for deployment in the context of the sharing economy. When enforcing these rules, a balance should be struck ensuring free data flow that is essential to sharing firms’ innovation and competition, and the need to ensure the level of data security required to underpin a well-functioning sharing society.     

充分发挥图书馆在终身教育中的作用

根据现代信息社会发展过程中终身教育要求和特点,阐述图书馆在终身教育服务中的优势及具体的服务措施,充分发挥图书馆在终身教育中的作用。     

The inadequate legislative response to e-signatures

This article examines the two most influential international initiatives on electronic signatures (UNCITRAL’s 1996 Model Law on Electronic Commerce and the 1999 EU Electronic Signature Directive). It considers whether the legislative approaches in Australia and the United Kingdom based on these initiatives are helpful in deciding whether lower level signature methods such as simple email messages are likely to satisfy a legal requirement for a signature. The conclusion reached is that they are unhelpful. The article goes on to consider whether legislative amendments based on UNCITRAL’s 2001 Model Law on Electronic Signatures or the 2005 UN Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts would improve the identified weaknesses. It concludes that such an update would clarify some issues, but that overall it will not solve the difficulties. The article ends with a brief speculation on the likely attributes of a more helpful approach.     

论招录体制改革下的公安法学教育

公安院校招录体制改革出现的新情况,使原有公安法学教育模式已不能适应改制生的教育需求,针对改制生的特点,公安法学教育应科学、合理设置法律课程,突出法律意识培养、实战能力培养,创新教学方法和手段。     

世界粮食危机与中国粮食安全

世界粮食危机预示着高粮价时代的到来,各国开始重新审视自己的粮食安全。全球人口膨胀和消费需求不断增加打破了供需之间的平衡,而美国推行的生物燃料政策和美元霸权进一步加剧了这种不平衡。因此,美国要为世界粮食危机的加剧负主要责任,但美国同时也是世界粮食危机的最大受益者,国际粮价的高涨体现了美国粮食武器的威力。面对形势严重的世界粮食危机,中国应该保证自给自足,高度重视粮食安全,力保粮食主权,实现经济和社会的可持续发展。     

A study of stranger rapists from the English high security hospitals

Abstract

Heterogeneity hinders our understanding of sexual violence; but does this problem extend to stranger rape and, if so, would the construction of homogeneous subtypes advance our understanding of this crime and aid criminal investigations and clinical practice? To answer these questions, 41 stranger rapists from the English high security hospitals were examined using version 3 of the Massachusetts Treatment Centre rapist typology (MTC:R3) and multidimensional scaling (MDS). The MTC:R3 suggested that sexual desire and opportunism were the primary motivations for these men, but that proportionately more psychopaths were violent and sadistic. In accordance with previous research, the men experienced problematic childhoods and displayed high rates of criminality and psychiatric morbidity in adulthood. However, MDS found that rapist histories and offence behaviours generally divide into sexual and violent themes. These results have important implications for theory, criminal investigations and clinical practice.     

Political Marketing Research in the 2000 U.S. Election

Abstract

It is not news that polls and other forms of marketing research are regularly employed to craft political strategy. What is new is that the 2000 U.S. election represented a turning point where political marketing research seems to take center stage. The print and broadcast media employed polls and other forms of research at levels far beyond anything ever seen before. At times, it appeared as if almost as much attention was being given to polls as was being given to the political candidates and the issues. This was clearly a new and important posturing of the role of political marketing research. With this as a backdrop, the current article compares polls and other forms of political research-focusing on what went wrong and what was right in terms of the use of polls, focus groups and Internet research during the 2000 U.S. election. The article ends with the presentation of some exploratory research that examines insights about respondents' opinions regarding the impact of political polls.