Intermediary Status Research Articles

DIGITAL FINANCIAL ASSETS AND THEIR OPERATORS IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

The relevance of the research topic is to consider the genesis of the legislative consolidation of the legal status of digital intermediaries, namely, the operator of the information system and the operator of the exchange of digital financial assets. The purpose of the study is to determine the role of an information system operator and a digital financial assets exchange operator in the Russian Federation. The scientific novelty of the article is manifested in the formulation of the provision that one of the main advantages of an information system based on a distributed registry is that the very technical properties of such a system allow for the issuance, accounting and circulation of digital financial assets without the participation of digital intermediaries due to the fact that this digital system already contains records of all changes being made, and therefore a priori is valid. Materials and methods. The paper presents an analysis of the current legislation, judicial practice and scientific doctrine on the problematic issue of the legal status of digital intermediaries – the operator of the information system and the operator of the exchange of digital financial assets. In addition, it provides comments on the relevant provisions of the digital financial assets Law. Results. In accordance with the legislation on the digital financial assets, the operator of an information system where digital financial assets are issued is recognized as a legal entity whose personal law is the Russian law and who is included in the register of information system operators by the Bank of Russia. The tasks of the information system operator mainly include ensuring the proper uninterrupted functioning of information systems. To complete the tasks, the information system operator must approve the rules of its information system and coordinate them with the Bank of Russia. Transactions permitted by the Russian law with the digital financial assets are made through the digital financial assets exchange operator, which collects and compares applications for such transactions or participates at its own expense in the transaction as a party in the interests of third parties. Digital financial assets exchange operators are credit organizations, trade organizers, as well as other legal entities that meet the requirements and are included by the Bank of Russia in the register of digital financial assets exchange operators. The theoretical and practical significance of the study consists in the identification by the authors of such a fundamental feature of the digital financial assets as non-mediation, which is a priori inherent in the digital financial assets, but, unfortunately, the Russian legislator rejected the corresponding legal regime of the digital financial assets. In this regard, third parties – digital intermediaries, namely the operator of the information system and the operator of the exchange of digital financial assets, are actually involved in the relations that are developing regarding the issuance, accounting and circulation of digital financial assets. Conclusions. The authors concluded on the basis of judicial practice that the viability of the legal norms considered in the article is questionable, since at the moment there are no disputes around the digital financial assets.

Institute of Digital Intermediaries in Law

The article concludes that an intersectoral institute of digital intermediary is being formed in modern legal science and legislation of the Russian Federation. The legal status of digital intermediaries is determined by the rights and obligations of the subjects of the main legal relationship, the conclusion, modification, and termination of which occurs through an information system, and the technological capabilities of this system. It is necessary to increase the security requirements for remote identification and authentication of users. The use of big data and artificial intelligence technologies makes it possible to implement automated decision-making processes with legal consequences for individuals. Digital intermediaries should actively inform the data subject about profiling and automated decision-making, including specific information about this type of processing in the privacy policy. The use of digital technologies carries additional risks associated with the need to ensure the information security of users, which requires: the organization of a permanent internal audit of an information system based on an effective risk monitoring system; the development of special security standards and the establishment of responsibility for their non-compliance.

The partialization (and parcelization) of citizenship?

ABSTRACT In 2016, Turner argued that ‘we are all denizens now’. Taking this argument and the proliferation of quasi-citizenship as a starting point, this article argues that such an argument masks the enduring importance and exclusionary power of citizenship. This article considers quasi-citizenship as a more precarious and less secure status than citizenship, but less precarious and more secure status than non-citizenship. Taking the UK EU Settlement Scheme as a case-study, the article exposes the realities of quasi-citizenship as an intermediary status that seeks to exclude migrants from citizenship. Overall, the article argues that expanding quasi-citizenship policies suggest 1) the weakening of citizenship as a status, via offering increasingly lesser and fewer rights (partialization), 2) the hardening borders of citizenship, and 3) the parcelization of citizenship, with the gulf of differentiation increasing between those who have secure access to the rights and status of full citizenship and those who do not.

Hepatitis B Virus-Specific Cellular Immunity Contributes to the Outcome of Occult Hepatitis B Virus Infection.

There is little known of immunologic factors leading to the occurrence of occult HBV infection (OBI). Specific cellular immune response to hepatitis B virus (HBV) core/pol peptides was compared between blood donor populations, including 37 OBIs, 53 chronic HBV infections (CHB), 47 resolved infections, and 56 non-infected controls, respectively. The rate of CD4+/CD8+ T cell proliferation in OBI or CHB carriers was higher than in HBV resolved and non-infected individuals (P < 0.05). The intensity of IFN-γ-secretion T-cell response of OBI carriers was highest, followed by CHB and resolved infections, and non-infected individuals (P < 0.05). The frequency of intracellular IFN-γ and IL-17A CD4+/CD8+ and IL-21 CD4+ T-cell responses was significantly higher in resolved infections than in OBI or CHB carriers (P < 0.05), while the level of extracellular IL-17A of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) was higher in OBI and CHB carriers than in resolved infections (P < 0.01). The frequency of intracellular IL-10 CD4+ T-cell response in CHB, OBI, and resolved infections was higher than in HBV non-infected individuals (P < 0.01). Intracellular IL-10 CD8+ T cell and extracellular IL-10 T-cell responses were higher in CHB than in OBI (P = 0.012) or HBV resolved infections (P < 0.01). In conclusion, the higher level of effective T-cell response with IFN-γ, IL-17A, and IL-21 contributes to resolved infection outcome, while higher levels of suppressive T-cell response with IL-10 result in HBV chronicity. OBI is an intermediary status between HBV resolved and chronic infections, in which IL-21 effector and IL-10 suppressor T-cell responses play an important role in directing the outcome of HBV infection.

Theoretically Informed Hospital Ethnography: Reflecting on Method

Disciplines anchor themselves using a particular kind of epistemology and ontology to produced it’s knowledge. In healthcare, quantitative research has been dominant were in social sciences, qualitative research was. However, in the last two decades, we have seen a mixing (better said in French with the word métissage) of strategies within those two disciplines. Despite the newfound acceptance of qualitative research within the healthcare field, some criticism about those strategies still exists and still impact the feasibility of conducting qualitative research, especially in hospital setting. More particularly, when it comes to the systematisation of the method, when conducting ethnography. In this paper, I argue that ethnography does remain scientifically rigorous, especially when it is informed by theory and used consistently. This article presents the ways in which I negotiated the uncertainties of doing a hospital ethnography on the use of the ventilator by using concepts from Latour’s (2005) Actor’s Network Theory, of ‘mediators’ and ‘intermediaries’. Staying attuned to various actors in the healthcare setting and taking care to ensure that whatever my research brought into the field maintained an intermediary status enabled me to alter my methods in the field while still respecting the necessity to gather data systematically.

Actual directions for improving the status of information intermediaries in the B2B segment of Russia

The article is devoted to the research of current state of information intermediaries’ legal control from the point of view its adequacy, certainty and meeting the needs of modern legal practice and B2B-segment of Russia. The author pays special attention to the issue of improving the status of information intermediaries in terms of balancing the rights and obligations of such entities, determining reasonable and protecting public and private interests conditions of responsibility of online platforms and web services as information intermediaries. On the example of cases from practice in the field of Internet marketing and data protection, the author explains the current legal gaps. They prevent the full restoration and protection of the rights and legitimate interests of citizens interacting with digital platforms that position themselves as information intermediaries. The paper, basing on the materials of modern judicial practice, defines the conditions for the responsibility of partner networks for the actions of entities affiliated with them that break national legislation. In order to better ensure the rights of personal data subjects, the author substantiates the need to distinguish between the categories of «operator» and «processor» of personal data in the legislation, as well as expanding the conditions for processing personal data defined in the law on the basis of agency contracts.

US economic and trade sanctions against China: A loss-loss confrontation

The economic and trade sanctions implemented by the United States (US) against China have lasted for a few decades and the structural imbalance of the US–China trade relationship has ultimately been escalated to a trade war recently. We examine the economic impacts of US sanctions against China on both sponsor and target countries during the last 20 years. We find that such impacts have significantly changed over time. On one hand, US economic sanctions have gradually extended from China’s labour-intensive to high value-added products and they have largely slowed down China’s trade growth for the last decade. On the other hand, US consumers and businesses have faced higher prices and production costs for Chinese imports (or import substitutes) in the wake of the increasing US trade sanctions, leading to great deadweight losses to the sponsor country. In addition, US economic and trade sanctions against China have largely impacted other economies involved in US–China trade as well. The intermediary status of the Hong Kong SAR has been greatly challenged. Overall, US economic and trade sanctions have caused pain on both China and the US, but their impact on China (the target country) has been largely weakened.

Participants of Digital Legal Relations: Trends in Law and Business

Digital legal relations have undoubtedly become an important part of relations regulated under civil law and business. The socio-economic digital basis has set the main directions for the existence and functioning of the relevant legal superstructure and the practice of applying rules governing certain relations. In this regard, the legal status of digital intermediaries, including their legal capacity and tort, is of particular importance. It seems important to investigate the problems involving the grounds for holding aggregators and other digital intermediaries liable, as well as guarantees of protecting the rights of persons with whom these intermediaries interact. The legislation governing digital relations has undergone significant changes over the past few years. However, the complex of relations between digital intermediaries as new subjects of law and other persons remains unresolved, and the practice of imposing on such intermediaries civil and other types of legal liability is unsettled. In the paper, the author describes his approach to the consideration and solution of these problems.

The boundary between “Judaism” and “Aryanism”: Anti-Semitic logic, litigation, and bureaucratic practices relating to the classification of “half-Jews” in Occupied France (1940-1944)

Under the Occupation, the French Jewish Statute made no provisions for an intermediary status for individuals of mixed heritage (who the administration called “half-Jews”), to the contrary of Nazi legislation in Germany. Consequently, there were no first- or second-degree mixed-heritage people in France; one was either Jewish or not. But the criteria for defining whether or not “half-Jews” were of “the Jewish race” varied between German and French texts, case law, and the practices of specialized bureaucrats. The boundary between “Jewish” and “non-Jewish” was tenuous, often arbitrary, and shaped by religious affiliation, a divorce, a marriage, or other fact of life. Being classified on the “good” or “bad” side of the “barricade” (according to the formulation of George Montandon, the ethno-racial expert of the Paris Prefecture of Police and the Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs [CGQJ]) was very often a matter of life or death. The administration (mainly the “Jewish Service” of the Prefecture of Police and the CGQJ) and the courts had to rule on thousands of “ambiguous cases.” The CGQJ delivered over 11,000 “Certificates of Non-Belonging to the Jewish Race” after painstaking investigations. This article considers the categories that agents of the State used to sort out these borderline cases, and tries to understand the root causes of this dogged quest to determine the legal and political boundary between “Jew” and “non-Jew.”

Полномочия и особенности деятельности страховых агентов и брокеров

The article considers the legal status of insurance agents and insurance brokers in the light of recent legislative changes. The provision of insurance services to the population is an urgent topic that requires detailed consideration, especially the legal status of insurance intermediaries causes a lot of discussion. This study examines the legal status, powers and features of insurance agents and insurance brokers. According to the results of the study, it was concluded that it is necessary to introduce legislative amendments to control the activities of insurance intermediaries and to determine the legal status of the document circulation of insurance brokers.

Класифікація фінансових посередників та їх роль на фінансових ринках

The paper is devoted to the issues of the study of the nature of financial intermediaries in terms of their role in financial markets and their types existing in different regions of the world. The place of financial intermediaries among other participants of the financial market is considered, it is described what positive effect they allow to achieve to other entities who use their services. The types of services they provide are outlined, as well as the new types of services of financial intermediaries beginning to be in demand. The American, European and Ukrainian models of classification of financial intermediaries are analyzed and logical connections between the variety of types and types of financial intermediaries, which are represented in the financial market of a certain region and the level of its development, are found. It is found out how classifications can be changed as a result of the development of certain types of financial intermediaries on the example of changing classifications in American economics. The key differences in the American and European classifications are highlighted and their reasons are substantiated. The paper analyzes the financial intermediaries, which are insufficiently developed in Ukraine in comparison with the American and European markets. The other classifications are also provided that may be useful in the process of analyzing the activities of financial intermediaries. The results of this study can be used as a basis for further study of the nature of financial intermediaries in the development of state policies to regulate the financial market of Ukraine and in the development of bills that determine the legal status of financial intermediaries in Ukraine.

Intra-Protein Coevolution Is Increasingly Functional with Greater Proximity to Fertilization

Intramolecular coevolution of amino acid sites has repeatedly been studied to improve predictions on protein structure and function. Thereby, the focus was on bacterial proteins with available crystallographic data. However, intramolecular coevolution has not yet been compared between protein sets along a gradient of functional proximity to fertilization. This is especially true for the potential effect of external selective forces on intraprotein coevolution. In this study, we investigated both aspects in equally sized sets of mammalian proteins representing spermatozoa, testis, entire body, and liver. For coevolutionary analyses, we derived the proportion of covarying sites per protein from amino acid alignments of 10 mammalian orthologues each. In confirmation of the validity of our coevolution proxy, we found positive associations with the nonsynonymous or amino acid substitution rate in all protein sets. However, our coevolution proxy negatively correlated with the number of protein interactants (node degree) in male reproductive protein sets alone. In addition, a negative association of our coevolution proxy with protein hydrophobicity was significant in sperm proteins only. Accordingly, the restrictive effect of protein interactants was most pronounced in male reproductive proteins, and the tendency of sperm proteins to form internal structures decreased the more coevolutionary sites they had. Both aspects illustrate that the share of outward and thus functional coevolution increases with greater proximity to fertilization. We found this conclusion confirmed by additional comparisons within sperm proteins. Thus, sperm proteins with high hydrophobicity had the lowest proportions of covarying sites and, according to gene annotations, localized more frequently to internal cellular structures. They should therefore be less exposed to postcopulatory forms of sexual selection. Their counterparts with low hydrophobicity had larger proportions of covarying sites and more often resided at the cell membrane or were secreted. At the cellular level, they are thus closer to externally induced forces of postcopulatory selection which are known for their potential to increase substitution rates. In addition, we show that the intermediary status of the testicular protein set in correlation analyses is probably due to a special combination of reproductive and somatic involvements.

Material Afterlives of the Conde Lucanor: Asynchrony in BNE, MS 17788

In 1860, the Spanish scholar Pascual de Gayangos published an anthology containing a new edition of the Conde Lucanor, the celebrated medieval frametale collection by Castilian author Juan Manuel. In preparation, Gayangos commissioned a transcription of the 1642 print edition of the Conde Lucanor, itself a reprint of the 1575 edition prepared by the Spanish humanist Gonzalo Argote de Molina. This transcription, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 17788, has received little critical attention due to its modernity and intermediary status. However, its textual and material histories illuminate the asynchrony of Gayangos’s editing practices, which combine cutting-edge philological methods with an amateur attempt to re-create the medieval past.

How International Social Ventures Overcome Liability of Outsidership: The Role of Intermediaries

This paper contributes to the growing interest in startup challenges of international social ventures (ISVs). One major challenge many ISVs face is dual liability of outsidership – high barriers to enter business and support networks both domestically and in lower-income target markets. Based on a study of ISVs out of Greater Boston, we examine how and under what conditions specialized intermediary organizations can help ISVs lower this liability. We find that ISVs can benefit from the knowledge, connections, and status of intermediaries, but that the effectiveness of support depends on the agenda of intermediary sponsors and ISVs’ own network.

Editorial

Mass and grassroots organisations are not part of the official political structure of the Chinese Party-state, yet they have been operating as key actors serving the interests of the Party-state while interacting with ordinary citizens in various ways since the early years of the PRC. By studying these organisation’s intermediary status and role in the XXIst century, this special issue of China Perspectives reveals their importance in the political system – as mediators, social service provid...

A Poetics of the Self. Ricoeur’s Philosophy of the Will and Living Metaphor as Creative Praxis

This article presents the conceptual groundwork for a “poetics of the self” by theorizing how and why a creative praxis rooted in Ricoeur’s philosophy of the will and hermeneutics of the living metaphor contributes to an individual’s on-going development of self-awareness. Its focus is on the affective fragility that manifests in an individual’s intermediary status of polarities – finitude and infinitude, freedom and nature – in conjunction with Ricœur’s tensional status of metaphorical truth. The act of writing poetry, it suggests, can be an aesthetic mediation that develops insight into the primordial discord of the servile will.

The Development and Change of Kyakhta Trade in the 18th and 19th Centuries

The Treaty of Kyakhta signed in 1728 has not only political significance, but also commercial significance for the Qing Dynasty and Russia. The signing of the Treaty of Kyakhta has legalized private transactions between the Qing Dynasty and Russian businessmen prior to that date through official recognition. At the same time, it also means the establishment of Kyakhta’s intermediary status in trade between the Qing Dynasty and Russia and even Europe as a whole. The development of Kyakhta trade is analyzed in this article through the changes of Kyakhta trade management methods by the Qing Dynasty government in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the characteristics of the merchants and commodities of the Kyakhta border trade during this period.

Graduate Students Bringing Emotional Rigor to the Heart of Community-University Relations in Food Dignity

Food Dignity is an inter- and postdisciplinary action research project designed to support five communities’ efforts to build sustainable food systems, tell their stories, and create common ground between the collaborating campuses and communities. Food Dignity graduate students were intermediaries between more senior academic part­ners and community partners. This paper high­lights graduate students’ encounters with academic supremacy, which refers to systemic inequalities and the material, ideological, and practical privi­leges afforded to forms of academic knowledge production. We build on Porter and Wechsler’s (2018) explanation of academic suprem­acy, which they define in another article in this issue, in order to highlight certain aspects that relate specifically to the graduate student experi­ence. Using autoethnography, we describe the institutional ties, emotional experiences, relation­ships, and values that defined our intermediary status. This status and the support of community partners allowed us to explore ways in which aca­demic supremacy influenced our work and strate­gies for dismantling academic supremacy. We detail the conflicting pressures from academic institu­tions and community partners and the role of social justice values in balancing these pressures; we review how academic researchers deal with difficult social problems in the research process and the potential to use emotion as a guide through these difficulties; finally, we posit praxis-from-the-heart as a strategy for using emotions rigorously and productively to combat academic supremacy.

Copyright in the blockchain era: Promises and challenges

The paper focuses on various legal-related aspects of the application of blockchain technologies in the copyright sphere. Specifically, it outlines the existing challenges for distribution of copyrighted works in the digital environment, how they can be solved with blockchain, and what associated issues need to be addressed in this regard. It is argued that blockchain can introduce long-awaited transparency in matters of copyright ownership chain; substantially mitigate risks of online piracy by enabling control over digital copy and creating a civilized market for “used” digital content. It also allows to combine the simplicity of application of creative commons/open source type of licenses with revenue streams, and thus facilitate fair compensation of authors by means of cryptocurrency payments and Smart contracts. However, these benefits do not come without a price: many new issues will need to be resolved to enable the potential of blockchain technologies. Among them are: where to store copyrighted content (on blockchain or “off-chain”) and the associated need to adjust the legal status of online intermediaries; how to find a right balance between immutable nature of blockchain records and the necessity to adjust them due to the very nature of copyright law, which assigns ownership based on a set of informal facts, not visible to the public. Blockchain as a kind of time stamping service cannot itself ensure the trustworthiness of facts, which originate “off-chain”. More work needs to be done on the legal side: special provisions aimed at facilitating user's trust in blockchain records and their good faith usage of copyrighted works based on them need to be introduced and transactions with cryptocurrencies have to be legalized as well as the status of Smart contracts and their legal consequences. Finally, the economics of blockchain copyright management systems need to be carefully considered in order to ensure that they will have necessary network effects. If those issues are resolved in a satisfactory way, blockchain has the potential to rewrite how the copyright industry functions and digital content is distributed.

Copyright in the Blockchain Era: Promises and Challenges

The paper focuses on various legal-related aspects of the application of blockchain technologies in the copyright sphere. Specifically, it outlines the existing challenges for distribution of copyrighted works in the digital environment, how they can be solved with blockchain, and what associated issues need to be addressed in this regard. It is argued that blockchain can introduce long–awaited transparency in matters of copyright ownership chain; substantially mitigate risks of online piracy by enabling control over digital copy and creating a civilized market for “used” digital content. It also allows to combine the simplicity of application of creative commons/open source type of licenses with revenue streams, and thus facilitate fair compensation of authors by means of cryptocurrency payments and Smart contracts. However, these benefits do not come without a price: many new issues will need to be resolved to enable the potential of blockchain technologies. Among them are: where to store copyrighted content (on blockchain or “off-chain”) and the associated need to adjust the legal status of online intermediaries; how to find a right balance between immutable nature of blockchain records and the necessity to adjust them due to the very nature of copyright law, which assigns ownership based on a set of informal facts, not visible to the public. Blockchain as a kind of time stamping service cannot itself ensure the trustworthiness of facts, which originate “off-chain”. Much work needs to be done on the legal side: special provisions aimed at facilitating user’s trust in blockchain records and their good faith usage of copyrighted works based on them need to be introduced and transactions with cryptocurrencies have to be legalized as well as the status of Smart contracts and their legal consequences. Finally, the economics of blockchain copyright management systems need to be carefully considered in order to ensure that they will have necessary network effects. If those issues are resolved in a satisfactory way, blockchain has the potential to rewrite how the copyright industry functions and digital content is distributed.