Contents:
Cloud Communities: The Dawn of Global Citizenship?, kickoff contribution by Liav Orgad
Citizenship in Cloud Cuckoo Land?, by Rainer Bauböck
Citizenship in the Era of Blockchain-Based Virtual Nations, by Primavera De Filippi
Global Citizenship for the Stay-at-Homes, by Francesca Strumia
A World Without Law; A World Without Politics, by Robert Post
Virtual Politics, Real Guns: On Cloud Community, Violence, and Human Rights, by Michael Blake
A World Wide Web of Citizenship, by Peter J. Spiro
Citizenship Forecast: Partly Cloudy with Chances of Algorithms, by Costica Dumbrava
The Separation of Territory and State: a Digital French Revolution?, by Yussef Al Tamimi
A Brave New Dawn? Digital Cakes, Cloudy Governance and Citizenship á la carte, by Jelena Dzankic
Old Divides, New Devices: Global Citizenship for Only Half of the World, by Lea Ypi
Escapist technology in the service of neo-feudalism, by Dimitry Kochenov
Cloud communities and the materiality of the digital, by Stefania Milan
Cloud Agoras: When Blockchain Technology Meets Arendt’s Virtual Public Spaces, by Dora Kostakopoulou
Global Cryptodemocracy is Possible and Desirable, by Ehud Shapiro
The Future of Citizenship: Global and Digital. A Rejoinder, by Liav Orgad
papers
Stanford Journal of Blockchain Law & Policy vol1 issue 1
Cryptocurrency and the Shifting IRS Enforcement Model
Jun 23, 2018
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Given the IRS’s steady shift to a more holistic tax enforcement approach, the Author believes that the IRS is likely to take a broad-based approach to cryptocurrency tax enforcement.
Essays
Hard Forks on the Bitcoin Blockchain: Reversible Exit, Continuing Voice
Jun 23, 2018
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Hirschman’s Exit/Voice conception shines explanatory light on stakeholder responses in firms and states in moments of decline. We apply it here to the Bitcoin blockchain, where it illuminates strange and unencountered qualities of the reactive choices open to varied stakeholders.
Initial Coin Offerings: The Top 25 Jurisdictions and their Comparative Regulatory Responses (as of May 2018)
Jun 23, 2018
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The Author codes the regulatory responses of the top 25 ICO jurisdictions in the world and provides a comparative analysis of their respective regulatory actions.
Data Governance in the Digital Age | Centre for International Governance Innovation
Data is being hailed as “the new oil.” The analogy seems appropriate given the growing amount of data being collected, and the advances made in its gathering, storage, manipulation and use for commercial, social and political purposes.Big data and its application in artificial intelligence, for example, promises to transform the way we live and work — and will generate considerable wealth in the process. But data’s transformative nature also raises important questions around how the benefits are shared, privacy, public security, openness and democracy, and the institutions that will govern the data revolution.The delicate interplay between these considerations means that they have to be treated jointly, and at every level of the governance process, from local communities to the international arena. This series of essays by leading scholars and practitioners, which is also published as a special report, will explore topics including the rationale for a data strategy, the role of a data strategy for Canadian industries, and policy considerations for domestic and international data governance.
Source: Data Governance in the Digital Age | Centre for International Governance Innovation
#Blockchain4EU: Blockchain for Industrial Transformations – European Commission
The project #Blockchain4EU is a forward looking exploration of existing, emerging and potential applications based on Blockchain and other DLTs for industrial / non-financial sectors. It combined Science and Technology Studies with a transdisciplinary policy lab toolbox filled with frameworks from Foresight and Horizon Scanning, Behavioural Insights, or Participatory, Critical and Speculative Design. Amid unfolding and uncertain developments of the Blockchain space, our research signals a number of crucial opportunities and challenges around a technology that could record, secure and transfer any digitised transaction or process, and thus potentially affect large parts of current industrial landscapes. This report offers key insights for its implementation and uptake by industry, businesses and SMEs, together with science for policy strategic recommendations.
Source: #Blockchain4EU: Blockchain for Industrial Transformations – European Commission
Cost of a 51% Attack for Different Cryptocurrencies | 51Crypto
PoW 51% Attack CostThis is a collection of coins and the theoretical cost of a 51% attack on each network.
Source: Cost of a 51% Attack for Different Cryptocurrencies | 51Crypto
51% Percent Attacks: Hacking a $2 Billion Dollar Cryptocurrency for Less Than $1.5 Million – Bitcoinist.com
Cryptocurrency researchers from FECAP University in Brazil have shown that it would take only around $1.5 million to attack the ETC network and still pull a nice little profit. With $55 million dollars, you could effectively bankrupt the currency, netting nearly $1 billion in straight profit.If a party that controlled just 2.5% of the Ethereum hash rate switched to ETC, they’d instantly control over 51% of the total network hash rate. The attack wouldn’t even be absurdly expensive. It’d cost what you would earn mining on the ETH network with 2.5% of the hash rate, which equates to roughly 525 ETH, or $318,000.
The Dutch Blockchain Research Agenda
In the last few months Balazs was participating in the creation of the Dutch Blockchain Research Agenda for NWO, the Dutch Science Agency.
The Agenda spells out the research priorities, and topics where more interdisciplinary research is needed. To quote the Agenda: “Given the complex fabric of technological and societal questions around blockchain, future research seems to require at least the awareness of this multi-disciplinarity, or even seek collaboration across the boundaries of disciplines. Blockchain research carries many challenges on the level of research design and methodology. As is the case with systems focused research, the proper demarcation of scope of future research projects and programmes is essential. This scope also sets the disciplinary mix that needs to be involved. At the same time, it should be ensured that the required disciplinary progress can happen, especially since different disciplines require research at different time scales.
Since blockchain technology is a moving target, in terms of research methodology one must also consider more exploratory, theory generating,
high risk and open-ended approaches, including tools such as mathematical modelling and analysis, business modelling, techno-economic analysis, functional and non-functional design and testing, action research, simulations and experiments in research labs and living labs, horizon scanning, etc. As this research agenda includes both fundamental and applied research, it requires active involvement from non-academic stakeholders from public bodies, industry, market sectors and the general public.
Another methodological challenge is the futureproofing of research. In such a volatile field, it is often difficult to distinguish issues relevant only in the short term, versus long term blockchain specific problems, versus fundamental research questions that cut across multiple digital technologies and have been and will be with us for decades.
There are several streams of investment that fuel research in the blockchain technology domain. Private investment through venture capital and
ICOs (crowdsourcing) as well as public investment by governments, universities, and research funding bodies should be aligned in a smart way.
In that context it seems inevitable to identify the fields that Dutch academia, research institutes and research departments of Dutch organisations are
best positioned to answer, either because they already excel in certain domains, or because they want to build skills and research capacity through
strategic investment.
The Agenda is now public And can be downloaded from here:
Read file
Critical Analysis of Law
Vol 5, No 1 (2018): New Economic Analysis of Law
Guest edited by Frank Pasquale (University of Maryland, Law), the special issue on New Economic Analysis of Law features illuminating syntheses of social science and law. What would law & economics look like if macro-, as opposed to micro-, economics were a primary concern of scholars? Do emerging online phenomena, such as algorithmic pricing and platform capitalism, promise to perfect economic theories of market equilibrium, or challenge their foundations? How did simplified economic models gain ideological power in policy circles, and how can they be improved or replaced? This issue highlights scholars whose work has made the legal academy more than an “importer” of ideas from other disciplines—and who have, instead, shown that rigorous legal analysis is fundamental to understanding economic affairs.
Source: Critical Analysis of Law
The Politics of Blockchain | SpringerLink
The aim of this supplement is to explore and critique this ‘blockchain ecosystem’, the politics it tries to hide, and the legal and regulatory ramifications it inaugurates. The following essays do not portray blockchain as providing all, if any, of the answers to the world’s problems. Instead, the challenge is in part to understand the tensions faced by law and regulation in defining blockchain within the ongoing networking, digitalisation, and datafication of the social. Success in this regard will be measured in the coming months and years by the grip that regulatory authorities and governments are able to maintain on the various strands of blockchain research, development, application, implementation, and conduct—a grip, moreover, that is able to be maintained alongside the regulatory conundrums that continue to plague the wider field of network technologies which are themselves still evolving, mutating, impacting, but not necessarily benefiting community or public interest ahead of private, commercial power. Understanding the extent to which law and regulation will play a role in securing democratic accountability of these powerful and far-reaching technologies is or ought to be a key concern for blockchain scholars and practitioners of all stripes.
Baseline Territorial Sovereignty and Cyberspace by Sean Watts, Theodore T. Richard :: SSRN
Abstract
The question of how territorial sovereignty operates in the interconnected yet diffuse, virtual yet material, and novel yet ubiquitous realm of cyberspace has proved enormously contentious. State practice in cyberspace presents a confusing array of behavior and justifications for conduct that runs along the enduring legal fault lines of territorial sovereignty. This article examines the legal history of sovereignty, emerging State cyber practice, and early legal views taken with respect to the application of sovereignty to cyberspace.
We concede contextual variations and exceptions to the integrity of territorial sovereignty have evolved for specialized domains such as the seas. However, we identify in territorial sovereignty a baseline rule of conduct and a corresponding duty on the part of States to refrain from interference with the integrity of conditions in other States’ territory. We argue that based on historical origins, legal evolution, international litigation, and recent State expressions concerning applicability of international law to cyberspace, the baseline rules of territorial sovereignty should be currently understood as a rule of conduct that generally prohibits States’ nonconsensual interference with the integrity of cyber infrastructure on the territory of other States.
We acknowledge that States may soon adapt sovereignty to operate differently in cyberspace, as they have in other contexts of international relations. However, in the absence of a lex specialis of cyber sovereignty and until States resort to deliberate international lawmaking, the baseline guarantee of territorial integrity provides a principled and normatively desirable understanding of sovereignty and how it relates to cyberspace. We urge States to act quickly to reaffirm their commitment to baseline Westphalian norms of territorial sovereignty in cyberspace while crafting, through accepted means of international legal development, a nuanced and effective doctrine of territorial sovereignty in cyberspace. A sound approach will acknowledge the binding legal character of territorial sovereignty as a limit on foreign interference but offer an emerging cyber-specific understanding much like that developed for other domains that have challenged national security and peaceful interactions between States.
Keywords: Cyberspace, Cyber, Sovereignty, Public International Law, State Responsibility, Computer, Violation of Sovereignty, Network Source: Baseline Territorial Sovereignty and Cyberspace by Sean Watts, Theodore T. Richard :: SSRN