A few weeks ago I posted about the potential legal liability of funding portals. Lo and behold, on September 20, 2021 the SEC brought an enforcement action against an issuer and its principals, and also against the funding portal, TruCrowd, Inc., dba Fundanna, and its owner, Vincent Petrescu. Here’s a link to the Complaint. If …

Continue reading The Legal Liability of Funding Portals: Update for TruCrowd Complaint

Jean-Marie Santander is used to making history. Within just 27 months, he took his company THEOLIA from the Marché Libre to the SBF 120 following a very successful equity offering, the speed of which has not been recreated in France since then. But Jean-Marie Santander wasn’t done and has now come out with a new...

The post How Blockchain Company Blue Co Revolutionizes CBD and Super Food Buying for Consumers appeared first on Strain Insider.

An issuer raising capital under Rule 506(c) must take “reasonable steps” to verify that investors are accredited. Rule 506(c)(2)(ii) specifies several steps that will be deemed reasonable, like getting a letter from the investor’s accountant. Looking to save money, some issuers are tempted to verify investors themselves rather than using a third-party service like VerifyInvestor. …

Continue reading USE A THIRD PARTY TO VERIFY INVESTORS UNDER RULE 506(c)

A recent report from the Future of Privacy Forum [PDF] sets out recommendations to tackle the privacy risks associated with immersive augmented (AR) and virtual-reality (VR) technologies that are increasingly being implemented in education and training, gaming, multimedia, navigation and communication.

As AR and VR applications that let users explore a shared digital overlay of the physical world in real-time become more widely adopted and improved, they will likely converge into one ‘extended reality’, or XR. These technologies accumulate and process vast amounts of sensitive personal information including biometric data, unique device identifiers, location and information about homes and businesses. Like other emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and 5G communications, however, this creates a risk to data subjects that could undermine the further adoption of AR and VR platforms by limiting their usefulness. Without this data, XR technologies simply cannot function.

The Future of Privacy Forum is a think tank that brings together academics, consumer advocates and industry to explore the challenges posed by technological innovation and to develop privacy protections, ethical norms and workable business practices. The purpose of its report is to consider current and future use-cases for XR technologies and provide recommendations for industry to implement them responsibly through the adoption of privacy guidelines. This includes advice for policymakers who need to consider how their data-protection law obligations are implemented in regard to the collection of personal data by XR technologies; for example, how hardware manufacturers maintain transparency in their data collection, use and sharing as well as how developers can process data locally.

The report makes several key recommendations. First, that policymakers should carefully consider how existing or proposed data-protection laws can provide consumers with meaningful rights and companies with clear obligations regarding XR data. It also suggests that hardware makers should consider how XR data collection, use and sharing can be performed in ways which are transparent to users, bystanders and other stakeholders.

For their part, XR developers should consider the extent to which sensitive personal data can be processed locally and kept on-device, while ensuring that sensitive personal data is encrypted in transit and at rest.

Platforms and XR experience providers should implement rules about virtual identity and property that mitigate, rather than increase, online harassment, digital vandalism and fraud. They also need to establish clear guidelines that mitigate physical risks to XR users and bystanders, and provide a wide range of customisable avatar features that reflect the broader community, encouraging representation and inclusion.

It’s also their responsibility to consult with the larger community of stakeholders including industry experts, advocates, policymakers, XR users and non-XR users, and integrate community feedback into decisions about software and hardware design and data collection, use and sharing.

For their part, researchers working in this area need to obtain informed consent prior to conducting research via XR technologies and consider seeking review by an institutional or ethical review board if consent is impractical.

Many of these recommendations are aimed at industry and the considerations are best reflected within privacy policies as well as end-user license agreements (EULAs). The difficulty with attempting to retrofit existing policies and agreements for this industry is that they run the risk of not fully appreciating the way these technologies operate. The usual box-ticking method of agreeing to EULAs and privacy policies common with software and websites may not fit so easily into XR.

The extensive personal data collected by XR technologies helps create better immersive experiences, but it can also exacerbate privacy risks – the unique nature of these technologies makes it difficult to mitigate risks by applying existing privacy policies and practices from other digital media sectors and requires new innovative approaches to choice, security and transparency. For example, VR headsets can capture large amounts of personal data such as dexterity, ease of movement and reaction times, potentially building up a health profile – eye-tracking technology is far more intrusive than cookies.

VR manufacturers need to ensure privacy is protected and data processed and stored securely – and only if they have the express consent to do so. They should also consider, where a device’s processing of medical data assists with diagnosis or treatment, whether medical device authorisation is necessary and whether the privacy risks arising from research could be mitigated by data anonymisation.

The FPF recommendations aim to provide a way for industry and policymakers to tackle this without compromising the benefits provided by XR technologies. The report considers that XR technologies are ever-evolving and seeks to address this by focusing on actual harms tied to user data.

The desired outcome is clearly for policymakers to work within an innovation-friendly regulatory environment by clarifying and harmonising existing rules and introducing industry-standard recommendations specifically tailored for the XR industry. The best way to do this is for industry and policymakers to get behind recommendations such as those provided by the FPF and consider how best to implement these within their existing practices.

Rayyan Mughal is a commercial contract lawyer and associate with Marks & Clerk.

I was recently in Cotonou for a 24-hour layover. Cotonou is the largest city of the small west African nation of Benin, and has become a secondary hub for emerging airline RwandAir. Taking advantage of its growing network, I booked a RwandAir ticket from Dakar, Senegal to Kigali, Rwanda via Cotonou. The transit stop included accommodation provided by the airline.

What is there to do in Cotonou? A quick Google search indicated that the closest attraction to the hotel was on the beach: an ‘amusement park’ called Air de Jeux Plage Erévan. This 'park' appeared to include a large-looking aircraft, so I decided to check it out. Little did I know the airframe was a historic Lockheed L1011 TriStar, full of amazing clues about its long and varied history around the world.

Cotonou appeared relatively relaxed compared to my previous destination of Dakar. The streets were quiet and the buildings were relatively low-rise. The beach was a wide expanse of sand, far cleaner than expected, with an ocean that is uninterrupted all the way to Antarctica. It was there that the ‘amusement park’ came into sight, and as I went closer the aircraft became clear: a white-washed Lockheed L1011 TriStar.

The post Exploring an Abandoned L1011 TriStar on a Beach in West Africa appeared first on AirlineReporter.

Audrey Yap, President of Licensing Executive International outlines why it is important for SMEs to embrace intellectual property.

We apologize for not having a blog post last week since we went on vacation but we make up for it this week with some positive news and research.  ...

The post Cannabis News & Research 3/5/21 appeared first on Natures Way Medicine.

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He's a full-time lawyer with limited free time and a strong urge to build his project. So he learned Django from scratch by tackling one problem at a time.

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First, I will give you my hypothesis answer which is "Yes" it has.  Of course, I have been wrong before and will be wrong again but this would be my position going into the discussion.  Because of COVID19 we have learned the proper mix of "I need go to the store" with "I can wait to get it delivered". So, yes, my answer is an resounding "Yes".

I see this for three main reasons and in this posting I am going use Amazon as the proxy for e-commerce since it is so dominant in that space.  A little background on how this idea started developing.  I tweeted the following:

"A casualty of #Covid19 in the Supply chain is going to be #Amazon. With elongated delivery times, missed deliveries and massive counterfeiting, @amazon has become useless. #Bricksandclicks with in-store pick up, curbside car loading and local delivery has won the day.

— 10xLogisticsExperts (@Logisticsexpert) April 11, 2020"

The next morning I opened the Wall Street Journal to an article (Posted at midnight and my tweet was at 10:40pm) titled  "Will We Forgive Amazon When This is Over"  by Christopher Mims (@Mims, Christopher.mims@wsj.com) (May be Paywall).  The theme is the same:  At precisely the moment we needed Amazon the most, the model failed and it failed big.  There are a couple of key areas where it failed and only one could really have been an "unknown unknown":

1. Merchandising and Inventory:  This is the big "unknown unknown" and we cannot hold Amazon or anyone fully responsible for this as no one could have seen the massive whipsaw / bullwhip which occurred with certain products.  We essentially had a "run on the bank" and ran out.
   
   However, the "bricks" portion was able to respond much faster through limiting amount someone can buy, "senior hours" and other tactics (Not the least of which is just public shame if you are walking out with cases of toilet paper).  Amazon just could not get ahead of this and still to this day are not ahead.  They essentially have shut down all other "non essential" product lines yet I can still get all that stuff through either BOPIS (Buy on line pick up in store) or just in store at the bricks.
   
2. No Customer Loyalty:  The big question for the e-commerce providers such as Amazon will be whether they invest a lot into their networks to support a crisis like this or do they chalk it up to a "once in a lifetime" crisis and assume everything goes back to normal.  I think it will not go back to normal and the pure e-commerce players will lose customers and not gain them. 
   
   Take the Amazon Prime program for example.  Many hundreds of thousands have paid for years into that program.  Yes, you get free delivery but it also is somewhat of a loyalty program as well.  As soon as the crisis hit, prime customers were thrown to the curb.  By doing that, many prime customers are asking themselves "What am I paying for" and now that they have had the experience of "bricks and clicks", these customers may never come back.  I would imagine Amazon will see a decrease in both Prime customers and customers overall.
   
3. The Technology Just Did Not Work:  This led to a massively poor customer experience that did not have to be.  In fact, prior to COVID19 most discussions I have been in have always started with, "If Amazon can do... (Kind of like, "If they can put a man on the moon why can't....)".  This will no longer be the case.  No one will want to replicate this.  I think most give them a pass on the inventory issues but why is their website so screwed up?  Why do I have to click 4 times before I find out either the product is out of stock, it is reserved for first responders or the delivery will be two months from now (Why would they even allow it to be displayed)?
   
   The purchase experience has been awful.  The great technology has gone haywire and their "hands off the steering wheel" AI systems failed at precisely the time they were needed.  I found websites of other "off line" stores to be far more helpful, far more accurate and far more useful.  Amazon is going to have reevaluate this entire problem.  Their technology just does not appear to be much better.
   
4. Counterfeiting:  One item the "bricks" stores have is brand reputation.  Nothing makes it into a Home Depot, Lowes, Target, or Wal-Mart store without it being properly vetted to safety, service and functionality.  The item has to perform as specified.  Yes, there will be some warranty claims but not complete failure.  The "E-Commerce" world, led by Amazon, has had this "endless aisle" approach and they purposefully do very little vetting.  They claim they are a "platform" not a store (Although I think this is mostly "lawyer speak" so they can defend in lawsuits).  This has led to massive counterfeits, items which are displayed but never fulfilled, , items which say they will be fulfilled but it may be 2 months from now etc. 
   
   What is worse is the e-commerce players want the "wisdom of the crowd" to sort through it all, figure it out with "star ratings" (Which are easily manipulated by the very people doing the counterfeiting) and then report them.  The e-commerce people want the buyer to be their merchandiser as well and not pay us.  Bad form.