On September 13 and 14, 2021, KIELTYKA GLADKOWSKI took part in two webinars, organised by Idea Growth (https://ideagrowth.org/), concerning the broadly understood i-gaming and sports betting, which are one of the core specializations of technology sector of KIELTYKA GLADKOWSKI. Each of the webinars had the form of a short 1-hour condensed session conducted by the experts of the above-mentioned fields.
On Monday, September 13, 2021, the first webinar addressed
“the imperative of advertising to acquire customers while respecting
various state laws and prioritizing responsible gaming practices.”
Technology transfer agreements as well as investment agreements are often accompanied by source code escrow agreements used to secure the IP rights to the software.
Source code
The key of
programs and software is the source code. It is the fundamental component of a
computer program that is created by a programmer. The source code should be written using a
human-readable programming language – usually plain text. The main goal of it
is to set exact rules and specifications for the computer that can be translated
into the machine’s language.
What is source code escrow?
Sometimes it happens that even if special
software tailored to one’s needs is created by a professional company, problems
may arise. The investor needs to make every effort to protect company in the
event that the contractor’s company ceases to exist, for example because of its
bankruptcy or liquidation. In such cases, the solution to secure the transfer
of ownership of the source code is to put in place source code escrow
agreement. This is a service that helps protect all parties involved in a
software licence by having a neutral, independent third party escrow agent hold
the source code.
British auction house Christie’s is where spectacular auctions take
place. Transactions that are carried out there are mentioned all over the
world. Many Christie’s auctions attract interest due to the fact that they may
be controversial, such as sale of an image created by artificial intelligence
or the work entitled “Femme assise près d’une fenêtre
(Marie-Thérèse)” by Pablo Picasso. Recently Christie’s announced that
another innovative auction is planned.
Namely its October “Post-War to Present” auction will include the
sale of 31 non-fungible tokens that are considered to be some of the oldest on
the Ethereum blockchain. A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unit of data stored on
a digital ledger, called a blockchain, that certifies a digital asset to be
unique and therefore not interchangeable. This will be the first ever live
auction with bidding conducted entirely in Ether. The NFTs that Christie’s is
offering in the fall have distinct legacies of their own. They are also
estimated to sell for between 250 and 350 ETH, which shakes out to
approximately between $870,000 and $1.3 million. These NFTs are Curio Cards that
were made in May 2017, so even earlier than CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties.
Aside from the Curio Cards NFTs, Christie’s will be auctioning NFTs
from the Art Blocks curated collection. Modern artists would have possibility
to choose their favourite post-war artworks and pay for them in Ethereum. The
tokens are representing real-world objects like art, music, in-game items,
videos and other seemingly mundane everyday signifiers. Works by renowned
artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning, Joan Mitchell and Grace
Hartigan will be part of the auction alongside works by Wayne Thiebaud.
The event definitely created a buzz among art enthusiasts. NFTs are highly valued digital assets which
uses blockchain to record the ownership status of the aforementioned items. After
the transaction only the buyer of an NFT has the official of being its owner.
However anyone can still view the item.
Recently, several large cryptocurrency-based auctions have brought
in huge amounts of money in the art world. The upcoming “Post-War to
Present” auction is sure to create a buzz among currency enthusiasts. One
thing we can be sure of – a digital revolution is coming, and the world of
cryptocurrencies will surprise us more than once.
The Wall Street Journal recently described quirks in the U.S. Tax Treaty with Malta that became a popular topic in the legal advice sector.[1] In the said article, WSJ describes an offshore tax shelter (a tax regulation in Malta) which promises rich Americans they can avoid lots of capital-gains taxes by setting up pensions in Malta. This issue is not only American struggle with tax abuse. For instance, Poland has also signed an international tax treaty with Malta (Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Poland and the Government of Malta for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income signed in La Valetta on 7 January 1994)[2] and in 2020 the Treaty was amended due to the necessity of closing loopholes in the international (bilateral) tax system[3]. Moreover as a restoration of the Polish industry after COVID-19 pandemic, the Polish Government and the Ministry of Finance prepared the new Tax Act which shall prevent the change of the entity’s tax residence to the offshore tax shelter [4].
Before
we move to the tax abuse based on the U.S. bilateral tax treaty with Malta it
is advisable to start with Treaty’s provisions treatment.
U.S.
– MALTA TAX TREATY
The Treaty was done in 8 August 2008 and came into force in late 2010. As Jeffrey L. Rubinger wrote The Treaty contains very favorable provisions that can result in significant tax benefits to U.S. members of a Maltese pension. In order for such U.S. members to take advantage of these benefits, the pension must qualify as a resident of Malta under the Treaty and also satisfy the limitation on benefits (LOB) article of the Treaty. [5]In his article Rubinger enumerates the Treaty’s provisions that could become a victim of the interpretation tax abuse.
Identification of the hacking problem – study on the example of law firm clients providing cyber security solutions
Identification of the hacking problem
Based on the US Cybersecurity Trends Report (link to an
online source at the end of the article), the hacking phenomenon records an
increase in cyber-attacks in 2019 and 2020. From the legal perspective, what is
particularly interesting is a significant increase in the recorded data loss
events as a result of hacking activities in relation to the number of cases in
individual years in the 2015-2020 prediction. One of the studies in the
indicated report shows two specific moments over the years. The first one took
place in 2016-2017, where we see an increase in hacker attacks by nearly 2,000
violations, but this is not related to a proportional increase in lost data,
which differs from those from 2016 by about 1.5 million. In 2017, there was a
slight increase in infringements, but more importantly, less data was lost. The
second of these important moments indicated by the experts took place in
2018-2019, when there was a drastic increase in lost data with a slight
increase in violations compared to 2018. We are seeing a drastic decrease in
the number of breaches with a simultaneous huge increase in lost data.
From the analysis of the report, a surprising conclusion
can be drawn that currently data breaches by hackers are less and less frequent
compared to previous years, but much more effective.
The report also shows annual global cybersecurity
transactions and equity financing in 2016-2021. In this respect there can be
observed the huge projected increase in cash outlays for the cybersecurity
target compared to 2020. The projected increase is over $ 10 billion. Despite
the increase in spending, there has been a decline in the number of
cybersecurity contracts.
The report presents the share of global cybersecurity
transactions in 2020 by country. The first thing that throws up is that the US
has over a half of shares in global market and is thus becoming a sort of
hegemon in the fight against hackers. China ranks second with 12%. On the other
hand, Israel ranks third with a 10% share, also showing a 4% increase compared
to 2019. With the same trend, it has a good chance of overtaking China in this
respect. The report shows the number of annual departures from the
cybersecurity sector through mergers and acquisitions and stock market debuts.
In the years 2016-2019, an upward trend can be noticed. From year to year, the
number of departures increased by 100.
The report also shows the ratio of the increase in the
number of the so-called megarounds (contracts worth over $100 million), which
results in an increase in the volume of transactions.
All these increases in value did not go unnoticed. The
consequence of the development of this type of industry, which is
cybersecurity, is the creation and development of private companies. There are
already over 30 companies in the world involved in the development of
cybersecurity technologies, the value of which exceeds $ 1 billion. In Europe,
for example, Acronis is such a company.
Almost 75% of cyber defenders are based in the United
States, most of them in California. Second place, with almost 20% concentration
of cyber defenders, is Israel. Canada and Ireland boast one “cyber
defender” within their borders. In Canada it is the company
“Isara”, and in Ireland “Tines”.
Methods of counteracting cyber attacks
There can be differentiated various methods of counteracting cyber-attacks. Most innovative ones are presented below:
