Blockchain Papers

Evanei Gomes dos Santos

No abstract is available for this record.

Seth Oranburg

No abstract is available for this record.

Hugo Leonardo Barboza, Ariê Scherreier Ferneda, Liz Beatriz Sass

O presente artigo tem como objetivo analisar a garantia de autenticidade por meio de Non-Fungible Tokens e a (in)validade para a proteção de obras intelectuais, com especial enfoque às obras artísticas. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida por meio do método hipotético-dedutivo, lastreado na revisão bibliográfica, e se justifica em razão do crescente número de comunidades de artistas que aderem à exposição e venda de suas criações em galerias digitais e transacionam em um Blockchain. Em um primeiro momento, estudou-se a proteção da propriedade intelectual, destacando-se convenções internacionais sobre a temática, bem como as disposições da legislação brasileira; e, em segundo momento, foi estudado o conceito de artes digitais, para fins de avaliar, posteriormente, a (in)validade do registro das obras por meio de NFT’s. Como resultado da pesquisa, conclui-se que o NFT se apresenta como uma possível solução para garantia de autoria e autenticidade das produções no espaço cibernético, embora ainda restem dúvidas sobre a segurança que esta tecnologia efetivamente possa atestar.

Jurgen Goossens

This contribution analyses whether blockchain as a distributed ledger technology and smart contracts as rule-based algorithms could contribute to safeguarding important public values of democracy and the rule of law in a world characterized by hyper-complexity and hyper-connectivity of public and private actors. Blockchain technology is often used as an underlying technology supporting the automatic and secure execution of rules by smart contracts. It is said that the technology could make the traditional pivotal role of trusted third parties redundant, though realistically the technology often rather enables a reorientation of their role. The use of distributed technology and algorithms has the potential to raise trust and legitimacy concerning the functioning of public institutions. However, at the same time their use pressurizes some essential principles of democracy and the rule of law, such as safeguarding fundamental rights like the right to privacy, as well as the proper functioning of checks and balances, including effective judicial review. Nonetheless, blockchain could also help generating trust and legitimacy regarding the composition of democratic institutions. Fair, secure political campaigns and voting procedures are a prerequisite of sustainable democracies. Therefore, this chapter also explores the opportunities and challenges of using blockchain technology that could contribute to the proper functioning of democracy by improving reliability and efficiency of the voting procedure and the monitoring thereof. Looking at the other side of the coin, the contribution examines the need of awareness that blockchain-based cryptocurrencies could be abused to evade political campaign finance rules due to anonymity and a lack of sufficiently effective national and supranational rules and oversight.

Matthew H. Kramer

Abstract This chapter concludes Freedom of Expression as Self-Restraint by probing briefly a few of the knotty procedural issues that attend the efforts by any system of governance to implement the moral principle of freedom of expression (or, rather, to implement some constitutional or statutory guarantee that corresponds more or less closely to that moral principle). Among the issues at which the chapter glances are the scalar character of compliance by systems of governance with the principle of freedom of expression, the legal remedies that are apposite for giving effect to the moral obligations imposed by that principle, the location and stringency of the burden of proof in litigation where communicative liberties are at stake, and the location of the general legal powers to invalidate statutes and other laws. The chapter explains why these issues have been consigned to a fairly brief concluding portion of the book, instead of being treated in depth.

Fareed Moosa

Section 1(a) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 stipulates that human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms are foundational values of South Africa’s sovereign, democratic state. Aligned herewith is s 39(1) of the Constitution, which directs that every interpretation of the Bill of Rights must promote the values that underlie an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom. Therefore, the Constitution’s human rights ethos, culture and spirit is a dominant theme serving as a guide when the term ‘property’ is interpreted in the context of the privacy clause (s 14(b)) and the property clause (s 25). This article argues that by applying a purposive cum contextual cum grammatical cum teleological interpretive methodology, the concept ‘property’ in ss 14(b) and 25(1) of the Constitution goes beyond the conventional ambit of common-law property. It is argued that, for constitutional purposes during tax administration, property also encompasses intangible property in the form of Bitcoin and possibly other cryptocurrencies owned by taxpayers, which represent legal interests worthy of constitutional protection during tax administration by the South African Revenue Service.

May Fong Cheong

The ‘financialisation’ of art has transformed art from an object of aesthetic expression to an instrument of increasing wealth, in turn increasing the likelihood of forgery. Art fraud harms artists, purchasers, museums, and society at large. Ultimately, the integrity of the art industry is at stake. The culture of secrecy and questionable auction practices widen the information asymmetry contributing to market failure in the art market. Multiple approaches are needed to address these challenges. The criminalisation of art fraud faces evidential difficulties of proof beyond reasonable doubt. The more accessible threshold of proving misleading conduct under s 18 of the Australian Consumer Law has been successfully invoked by artists against the forger, a purchaser against an auction house, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission obtaining pecuniary penalties and restraint orders against art offenders. Besides imposing presumptive liability on auction houses, authentication boards and a Code of Conduct for Art Merchants will promote transparency in the art market.

Tom Gerald Daly

Gardbaum’s comparative political process theory (CPPT) arrives at an odd juncture in world history. Positing a role for courts to remedy representative democracy’s defects, especially given the ascendance of authoritarian populism, it was completed just before the global COVID-19 pandemic hit and places courts center-stage just when they have suddenly receded into the background. Exceptions include the US Supreme Court’s refusal to extend the deadline for absentee ballots in the Wisconsin presidential primary on April 7, 2020—decried by Justice Bader Ginsburg as generating “massive disenfranchisement.”1 Even before the pandemic, it appeared increasingly untenable to cleave to a view of courts as strong bulwarks for threatened democratic systems. A growing literature frames the US Supreme Court as degrading democracy due to the substance of its decisions, not the mere fact that it enjoys constitutional supremacy.2 The Constitutional Tribunal has been captured and pressed into service as a “government enabler” in Poland.3 The Israeli government is said to have retained the “judicial revolution” empowering the courts while rolling back its liberal dimensions.4 The Indian Supreme Court has appeared more interested in self-preservation than guarding the democratic system threatened by Modi, and has undermined the functioning of parliament.5 It is a profoundly different global reality compared to just a decade ago, when the international juggernaut of juristocracy still seemed unstoppable. We are potentially entering the era of “post-juristocracy,” where courts’ decades-long accretion of governance power—and the accompanying obsession with, and faith in, courts—is waning. While courts remain a core preoccupation, many in the global comparative constitutional law community seemed to be moving on to new obsessions, such as political parties, citizens’ assemblies, and other deliberative innovations.6 Yet, Gardbaum’s theory remains acutely relevant. The pandemic has laid barer than ever deficiencies in governance worldwide and re-emphasized the centrality of effective political processes to what Schmitter calls “real-existing democracy.”7 As recent high-profile cases attest, courts play an irreplaceable role in supporting the role of other systemic actors—not least the UK Supreme Court’s stunning riposte to the government’s prorogation of Parliament.8 Gardbaum’s theory presents a laudable project to go beyond zero-sum, excessively abstracted debates on judicial review’s democratic legitimacy, and a patchwork of single-country analyses, by crafting a framework for understanding how courts worldwide can offer a targeted democracy-supporting role. This article responds to Gardbaum’s theory on the theoretical and empirical planes. Section 2 addresses how CPPT relates to existing theories not addressed in his account. Section 3 addresses contextual factors that complicate, frustrate, and limit the application of his theory. The main argument is that CPPT can be more fully integrated with existing frameworks, and that the assumed universality of its application should be reconsidered against today’s global reality. In constructing his theory Gardbaum draws, beyond Ely, on the work of theorists such as Sam Issacharoff, but does not engage with a range of relevant frameworks.9 This section places his account in a fuller context, drawing out its connections and resonances with existing theories. First, a brief summary. Gardbaum’s theory builds on Ely’s “participation-oriented, representation-reinforcing” approach to judicial review across three dimensions: (i) expanding Ely’s binary focus on incumbents’ suppression of democratic participation and systematic disempowerment of minorities to encompass additional malfunctions, including legislative failure to hold government accountable, executive capture of independent institutions, special interests’ capture of the political process, and outright dysfunction of one or multiple institutions; (ii) shifting the focus from outputs (especially legislation) to process; and (iii) seeking a more universal theory than Ely’s “self-consciously parochial” approach. For Gardbaum, like Ely, policing against erosion and distortion of the political process cannot be left to the elected branches alone, as vividly underscored in today’s era of “abusive constitutionalism” where the primary targets of errant executives are the structures of democratic government, rather than rights, and where policing legislation alone will leave much dysfunction and manipulation unremedied. CPPT seeks to provide a framework for grouping together issues that may otherwise not be analyzed as variants of the same problem, and a standard for when courts should intervene. For Gardbaum, courts should assist the democratic system to function “as it is supposed to,” support the functioning of other systemic actors and guard institutional pluralism, block attempts to stymie deliberation, contain and prevent manipulation (even if it cannot be fully remedied), and do so through a mix of mostly weak-form review, but also strong-form review when necessary: policing electoral processes and rules; lawmaking processes; mechanisms for executive accountability between elections; and rules and procedures of the executive and legislative branches, and the administrative state more widely. This departs from Gardbaum’s long-held position focused exclusively on weak-form review as the best universal option, allowing courts to adjudicate boldly and guard the coherence of the constitution without antagonizing the other branches, raising the risk of political attacks, and undermining the principle of judicial independence.10 The return to Ely’s theory, as well as moving past the longstanding US debate between interpretivists and non-interpretivists, serves to reanimate the well-worn debate hammered out in the context of long-established Western democracies, where the Waldronian and Dworkinian camps for and against strong judicial review (i.e. the ability to strike down legislation, and judicial supremacy more broadly) had argued to a stalemate by the early 2000s. Gardbaum’s theory also resonates with a parallel debate encompassing a broader suite of theories on judicial roles in young and Global South democracies which, as explained in Section 2, has increasing relevance to all democracies in the era of global “democratic decay.” This debate can be characterized as containing five principal, partially overlapping, arguments: Gardbaum’s “weak review” argument, discussed above, and what may be dubbed the “mirror,” “Global South,” “surrogate,” and “scaffolding” arguments.11 The “mirror” argument holds that constitutional courts in young democracies should approximate the role carried out by courts in mature democracies; playing an active part in democratic governance, but acting strategically to avoid addressing matters that will trench unduly upon other government branches’ sphere of action. For Sadurski and Ginsburg, discussing younger democracies in Europe and Asia, the main contribution courts can make is protecting rights,12 and constraining state authority.13 Ginsburg suggests caution is warranted regarding intervention “on core issues of the political process,” albeit in the context of extreme cases in Mongolia, South Korea, and Thailand concerning impeachment, the formation of government, and appointment of the prime minister.14 Daniel Bonilla Maldonado has argued that the jurisprudence of non-Western constitutional courts, including the Colombian and Indian apex courts’ assumption of more expansive governance functions across both substance and process, should be viewed as a legitimate “constitutionalism of the Global South” constructed in response to starkly different socio-political contexts and governance challenges—including political violence, high rates of poverty and inequality, cultural and religious diversity, and “consolidation of the rule of law”—which should not be discounted simply because it departs from the approaches taken by leading Western apex courts.15 The “surrogate” argument pushed this logic to the extreme, contending that courts could drive democratic development where the existing political party and wider political systems are unequal to the task. Scheppele described the stunningly assertive role of the Hungarian Constitutional Court in the 1990s as “democracy by judiciary.”16 The Court not only intervened strongly regarding outputs—striking down a third of all laws passed by parliament in its first six years, for instance—but also weighed heavily in the legislative process, especially by issuing advisory opinions during parliamentary deliberations and ordering the legislature to enact laws mandated by the Constitution.17 Approaching the “separation of powers as a contact sport,” the Court assumed an expansively interventionist role.18 The “scaffolding” argument adopts a much more targeted approach, focused on actively mitigating the worst deficiencies of young democracies and preventing elected organs from overwhelming the basic structure of democratic governance. For Issacharoff, in states such as South Africa, where the democratic transition leads to single-party dominance, the courts’ central role—which constitutes legitimate intervention in the political process—is protecting the “vitality of democratic competition for electoral office and the ability of the political process to dislodge incumbents”; to prevent the transition souring into a new autocracy through hobbling of the opposition, partisan capture of all state power, and control of elections and the media.19 Courts thereby shore up the “weakness of not only political institutions, but the ancillary civil-society participants in democratic life”—especially political parties.20 In the Latin American context, Gargarella’s concept of “democratic justice” has similarly argued for targeted judicial assertiveness, especially to counter excessive concentration of power through hyperpresidentialism.21 My own position aligns with the scaffolding argument, on the basis that it respects the principle of popular government, avoids the trap of overloading courts, provides a sense of core mission, and expects courage when fundamental democratic functioning is at stake—not merely staying within the political branches’ “tolerance levels.”22 More recently, David Prendergast has revisited Ely’s theory in arguing for a “suitably restrained” judicial approach to protecting any kind of democracy from populism, through specific, modulated, and often prophylactic intervention in political processes “to correct them when they have gone awry and to help prevent them going awry in the first place,” by policing the fairness of processes and procedures, and upholding institutional pluralism.23 Placed within this broader theoretical landscape, Gardbaum’s theory clearly pursues a scaffolding argument in its delineation of a sphere of robust judicial intervention without according courts uncabined discretion. However, he augments existing frameworks by providing a more granular theory of how targeted intervention may play out in practice, and the issues it would address. Gardbaum’s self-consciously global theory provides an illuminating analytical lens for a variety of states. It adds to our understanding of the UK Supreme Court’s reasoning in its prorogation judgment that judicial intervention “will not offend against . . . [but] be giving effect to the separation of powers.”24 It provides a clear framework for judicial protection of representative democracy in states still considered to enjoy good governance and independent courts—the Canadas, Germanies, and South Koreas of the world—as well as states in which, despite significant challenges, the democratic system has not degraded beyond targeted judicial intervention, such as South Africa. It may be instructive for states undergoing democratic transition, such as the Gambia, where both draft constitutions envisage a rather powerful supreme court.25 However, in the global climate of democratic decay, various factors complicate and limit CPPT’s universal application. Recall here that Waldron’s core argument against strong judicial review made a distinction between “well-functioning democracies” and other states. For Waldron, in the former—with adequately functioning representative and judicial organs, most officials and citizens committed to the idea of individual and minority rights, and “persisting, substantial and good faith disagreement” concerning the implications and meaning of such rights commitments—strong judicial review cannot be justified.26 In the latter, by implication, more extensive judicial action might be justified, suggesting the democratic legitimacy of judicial review, and its ambit, is context-sensitive. Of course, Waldron never specified what states counted as well functioning, but we could surmise his inner circle as comprising Global North democracies in North America and northern Europe, and perhaps states such as Japan and Costa Rica. The “parallel debate” on young and Global South democracies discussed in Section 2, while interesting from a comparative angle, was intuited to be of limited relevance to well-functioning democracies. The global phenomenon of democratic decay has significantly softened this dividing line. With many long-established democracies experiencing authoritarian populist leadership, dysfunctional governance, weakened parliaments, hyper-partisanship, sweeping negative transformation of the political-party system, and society-wide polarization, the parallel debate has become more broadly relevant.27 The pandemic has revealed this political dysfunction in its most alarming detail: Scheppele, for instance, has described the Trump administration as acting like the government of an “(almost) failed state.”28 However, this is not an argument for untrammeled expansion of judicial power. Indeed, even with the most independent, learned, perceptive, and strategically nimble court, the assumption of an overweening tutelary role could never be justified in democratic terms: indeed, arguments casting Brazil’s Supreme Court as a “moderating power” beyond the reach of any democratic control, as a response to the perceived failures of democratic politics, have been sharply criticized.29 Yet, even within the narrower confines of CPPT, it is contested that the current US Supreme Court could meet its apparent starting preconditions of independence, impartiality, and institutional legitimacy. Responding to the Kavanaugh nomination debacle, Epstein and Posner have offered that the Court, “[f]or the first time in living memory, . . . will be seen by the public as a party-dominated institution, one whose votes on controversial issues are essentially determined by the party affiliation of recent presidents.”30 Recent decisions have fueled the arguments of both the Court’s supporters and detractors: the landmark six-to-three judgment of June 15, confirming that the antidiscrimination protections of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 apply to gay and transgender workers, can be argued as proof of its independence;31 while just two weeks later a judgment significantly freeing the President’s power to remove senior officials in the executive branch has raised serious fears.32 Many see the rot as much deeper than the Kavanaugh era, perceiving the Court as, not just a victim of authoritarian populist leaders, but itself an engine of democratic decay, having starkly degraded the structural functioning of the democratic system—including its watershed 2010 Citizens United decision on campaign financing and its weak response to gerrymandering.33 This view sees the present as merely a continuation, albeit intensified, of past practice—including the Court’s refusal to extend the deadline for absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s presidential primary in April 2020, which left citizens in the position of pitting their health and lives against exercising their democratic rights.34 Greenhouse described the decision as an exercise in “raw partisanship,”35 while Justice Bader Ginsburg’s dissent characterized the majority’s judgment as not only permitting “massive disenfranchisement” but endangering “the health of the Nation.”36 What might have happened with a stronger decision in line with CPPT? Had the Court extended the date for absentee ballots, raising the risk of a Republican loss and setting a precedent that could vastly transform the electorate for the November presidential elections, might it have unleashed serious political attacks—or even non-compliance? With increasing political pressure on courts, claims of absolute presidential power, and denial of the existence of any objective institution outside the realm of partisan contestation,37 we have strayed far from the “waspish civilities”38 of yesteryear, where (despite serious deficiencies in the democratic system) US governments could still be trusted to comply with rulings they bitterly opposed. Yet, it is not merely about this government. Perhaps more problematic is that CPPT tends to characterize problems as isolated, aberrant, or limited malfunctions, when the US political process as a whole faces multiple deeply rooted challenges arguably beyond judicial remedy. For instance, in response to the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause39 that partisan gerrymandering is “incompatible with democratic principles” but non-justiciable, Levinson argued that even adopting Justice Kagan’s (minority) solution would not have provided “a genuine cure for what ails us as a political system.” The only remedy would be for a democratic movement to “rise up” and push for a constitutional convention.40 Even this may be insufficient. Gardbaum’s framing of the 2017 tax law, for example, as an instance of “undue influence and corruption of the lawmaking process”41 elides the structural symbiosis of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and the Republican Party, which blurs the division between the two, and leaves a form of “shadow party” in place, distorting the political process, which even constitutional reform would not address.42 That said, even if CPPT faces clear limitations, it remains a valuable yardstick. For instance, we can see the legitimacy of the Polish Supreme Court’s pushback against government and (captured) Constitutional Tribunal actions to end judicial independence as the institutional at the core of the democratic system by In the Gardbaum’s theory may more robust protection where degraded democracies courts as a central for threatened democracies, recent have been a reality about how we might reform courts, or even democratic through institutional However, as global juristocracy its we also guard against out the with the is any from the recent it is to avoid of any as courts never as or as they have so often been the is not While CPPT deeper about the of universal theories of judicial review, or at least the to more up their limitations, for to the democratic role of courts in our constitutional or more theory, a for courts to in guarding us all on which to and

Eugene Lim

Dr Eugene C Lim is a faculty member at the City University of Hong Kong School of Law. This article Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have, in recent years, triggered a dramatic paradigm shift in how we conceive of authorship and creation. Intelligent machines, such as those powered by the new GPT-3 neural network technology, are capable of generating expressions, composing text, performing translations and producing other ‘creative’ outputs once thought to be beyond the ability of computers. This article will focus on intelligent AI applications (or ‘creative avatars’) that are programmed to replicate the ‘style’ of a human author (such as Shakespeare, Rembrandt or JK Rowling), and the regulatory challenges flowing from the generation of...

Cătălina Goanță

No abstract is available for this record.

Atiba R. Ellis

Despite the antidiscrimination frameworks contained in the constitutional and statutory protections for the right to vote, access to the American ballot box is generally perceived as heavily contested. More precisely, many right-to-vote advocates (and their popular supporters) believe that the right to vote is in a crisis of exclusion so extreme that it represents a resurgence of Jim Crow racial exclusion from the franchise. Advocates for election integrity initiatives and their supporters claim that because of impending threats by “illegal voters” who will distort election results, initiatives like voter identification laws, proof of citizenship laws, and voter purges are necessary, else the integrity of the electoral process will be destroyed.\nThese views are diametrically opposed and suggest that what we know about the status of the right to vote itself is at stake. One view is premised on seeing the ecosystem of democracy as replicating intersecting racial and class-driven exclusion. The other sees the world as dominated by the threat of illegal voters and supposes that the threat of voter fraud is an existential threat to American election integrity. That such divergent views exist on exactly what the crisis of voting rights is, suggests that there is a fault in the way we obtain and order our knowledge regarding American democratic practices. Our knowledge about how to understand the right to vote is a contested issue. ...\nIn the years since this argument, the meme of voter fraud has been amplified17 and augmented in the far more dense (and self-selecting) political ecosystem that is Internet-driven American political discourse. The meme has served as justification for not only voting rights policy changes, like voter identification laws, but also to connect the threat of so-called “illegal voters” to issues ranging from proof of citizenship requirements, to felon disenfranchisement, the census, and the Electoral College. The evolved, weaponized, amplified voter fraud meme has created an epistemic crisis—a crisis of how we know—for the law of democracy.\nThis short Article will consider this crisis. The Article will argue that the meme has evolved providing an “alternative facts” explanation for voting threats to the creation of a worldview that underscores an ideology of exclusion of those unworthy to exercise the franchise by expanding the narrative of the persons and communities who pose a threat to American elections. The Article will turn next to explaining my claims about the voter fraud meme and connect that to how it consolidates political power. It will then examine how the meme has evolved and amplified in recent years and consider its ramifications for upcoming election cycles. And then the Article will end by considering the larger, epistemological threat that such meme-driven thinking poses to our democracy, and how the law of democracy is ill-suited to address such problems. But to adequately explain this point, I must first draw on my prior research to explain the sense in which I mean a “meme” and how it relates to voter fraud talk.

Israel Cedillo Lazcano

Cryptocurrencies have been around since 2009 when the programmer Satoshi Nakamoto launched the technology behind Bitcoin. There are now several different cryptocurrencies and they are likely to be ...

Andrew Dickinson

Abstract This chapter examines the range of challenges raised by virtual cryptocurrencies for the conflict of laws in England and other jurisdictions in the European Union, along with possible ways of addressing those challenges. It first provides an overview of virtual currencies and cryptocurrencies before discussing the regulatory challenges presented by cryptocurrencies as a form of ‘disruptive technology’ for the conflict of laws. It then considers the law applicable to the relationships between participants within a cryptocurrency system, with reference to Bitcoin and Ripple, and the question of whether virtual cryptocurrencies are capable of constituting ‘money'’ with equivalence to national (fiat) currencies. The chapter concludes with an analysis of how virtual cryptocurrencies should be characterised as property in the conflict of laws, focusing on the law applicable to assignments of claims under/outside the Rome I Regulation.

Marc Jonathan Blitz

Just over twenty years ago, in 1998, science fiction writer and technologist David Brin warned, “One of the scariest predictions now circulating is that we are about to leave the era of photographic proof. . . . We are fast reaching the point where expertly controlled computers can adjust an image, pixel by microscopic pixel, and not leave a clue behind.” (David Brin, The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? 28 (1998)). Now, many articles are reporting that a similar technological transformation is occurring in the realm of audio- and video recording. Legislators and legal scholars have begun asking what laws or technological measures can be used to protect the public from being deceived by “deep fake” videos. This symposium essay considers how First Amendment free speech protection might apply to the creation of such videos – and how such protection might differ from the protection that the Supreme Court found, in 2012, applies to false statements of fact. First, it analyzes how courts have generally adhered to a well-established dichotomy in First Amendment treatment of false claims: In the commercial marketplace, government often stands ready to intervene to protect us against being sold forgeries or other fake goods. The same is true in certain situations where security is at stake, for example, where a fake ID might give a person unwarranted access to an airplane or a building off-limits to the general public. Matters are very different, by contrast in the marketplace of ideas. Here, individuals are largely on their own. Government may not constitutionally exile certain ideas from the free trade in ideas, as it can ban harmful goods or services from the realm of buying and selling. In the realm of free expression, wrote Justice Jackson, “every person must be his own watchman for truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.” Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516 (1945) (Jackson, J concurring). The justices in the 2012 case, United States v. Alvarez, disagreed about how to classify verifiably false autobiographical statement in this dichotomy (and thus disagreed about how to analyze Alvarez’s false claim to have won a Congressional medal of honor). But they largely agreed that false statements on matters of public concern should generally be treated as contributions to the marketplace of ideas, and receive staunch First Amendment protection – unless they constitute defamation, fraud, or some other legally-cognizable harm. Having examined the Alvarez decision and certain difficulties that confront it, the essay then asks whether this First Amendment framework requires modification when the vehicle for deception is not merely a falsity but a forgery – that is, where it is not merely the content of the speech that is intended to deceive, but also its purported source or vehicle. A deep fake video, for example, does not simply present a false description of an event. It clothes such falsity in the authority of video evidence. The essay considers some of the reasons why the First Amendment should perhaps give government greater leeway to regulate fake video- or audio-recording than verbal lies - why, for example, a false statement about war-time actions might be protected speech, whereas a fake video of an event in that war allowing people to see with their own eyes, events which never occurred - might raise more significant concerns. Or why the false content in a fake news article may be protected speech but this may not be true of the false guise it wears as a New York Times, Chicago Tribune, or Washington Post article when neither publication played any role in it. The essay also briefly considers some of the difficulties that courts would face in attempting to differentiate in this way between falsity and forgery, and providing different First Amendment rules to each category of deception.

Marcin Wielec, Bartłomiej Oręziak

This article concerns the correlation between criminal law and procedure and the technical, technological and civilisation progress in the form of possibility to stand bail in Bitcoin virtual currency (cryptocurrency) in the criminal procedure. The article, firstly, presents introductory remarks to provide information about the analysed subject. Secondly, there is an outline of the essence and mechanism of applying bail in criminal procedure. Thirdly, the process transformation of money as an element of assets is presented. Fourthly, the article presents a categorisation of digital money and an economic qualification of Bitcoin. The above provides a background for argumentation relating to the legal qualification of Bitcoin as money and presentation of the basic threats connected with this cryptocurrency. The article ends with a brief summary containing the authors’ view on the subject of these reflections and a proposal of the desired legal amendments, addressed to the Polish legislator.

Ross Anderson

No abstract is available for this record.

David Fox

Abstract This chapter focuses on the characterisation and treatment of cryptocurrencies in the common law of property, using Bitcoin as the main example. It first examines how a crypto-coin might be viewed as an object of property, and more specifically whether it could make a suitable object for any regime of property rights at all, before discussing the fungibility, specificity, scarcity and exclusivity of cryptocurrencies in the context of property law. It then considers whether crypto-coins fall into either of the two conventionally recognised categories of personal property: choses in possession or choses in action. It also explores the applicability of rules of derivative transfer of title to crypto-coin transactions, and how the standard rules of following and tracing may be used for the identification and tracing of cryptocurrencies through mixtures. Finally, it looks at remedies available at common law and in equity for enforcing titles to cryptocurrencies.

Patrick Lyons, Simone Stirner

It’s our thirtieth anniversary here at Qui Parle. Wondering how to honor this milestone—in a year that gave more reason for outcry than celebration—we turned to our title as a guiding frame: who speaks? Formulated as a question in the first weeks of 2017, this was, most immediately, a turn to thinking about speech today, be it free, double, or squarely violent. At the same time, it was a self-referential move. Who speaks when Qui Parle speaks? From its beginnings, Qui Parle has been a deeply collective project, with an astoundingly rapid generational turnover, and to capture it in its broadest essence would prove nearly impossible. None of us currently on the board of editors has been around for more than five years, so in a sense, we approach this anniversary with something of a short-term memory. But perhaps these shortcomings are the best testament to pay to the future of this collectivity, that it might keep growing, expanding, giving voice. We decided to reach back in time, offering up the limits of our collective memory as the catalyst for reunion, and gathering past voices from across and throughout these thirty years to testify as they saw fit to the journal, to speech, or simply to use this occasion as a timely soapbox.Here’s what we wrote:Dear Past Contributors,On the occasion of its 30th anniversary, Qui Parle is publishing a special issue on speech, gathering articles that consider the act of speech, the conditions of its practice, and its political and aesthetic ramifications. As part of this anniversary issue, we are inviting you, our past contributors, to write a brief response to the question “Who Speaks?” We reach out to you at a time of deepening social and political uncertainty, one which calls for critical reflection in diverse forms. As such, we hope you’ll accept this invitation to reflect in whatever way you see fit: critique, satire, anecdote, poetry, even illustration. We will collect your impressions as a dossier in this special issue. Contributions should be between 1–1000 words (or a visual equivalent) and submitted to us by April 21, 2017.Thank you for your contributions to Qui Parle across these 30 years. We look forward to hearing and seeing what you have to say!Sincerely,The Editors of Qui ParleHere’s how they, you, responded, arranged chronologically in order of appearance in the pages of the journal. We were grateful to receive so many kind words, well-wishings, anecdotes, critical reflections, and acute interventions. In the end, we settled on thirty contributions to best reflect the occasion (and so as not to overwhelm our generous publishers). They appear in this issue next to other previous contributors, as well as a series of new voices. They speak to and resonate with one another, yet they do not always agree. Between disciplines, generations, and critical perspectives, the voices in this collection insist on openness of the question itself, “who speaks?” Now we share their responses—and this issue—with you, our readers, in hopes of opening the conversation further. So here they are, thirty voices for thirty years. And here’s to thirty more. Authors included:Jared SextonJean-Luc NancyJ. Hillis MillerLisa Myōbun FreinkelKaren JacobsJohn CulbertAlexander García DüttmannMichael NaasLisa SamuelsJeff FortAra H. MerjianStuart J. Murray and Sara KendallGerhard RichterKaren FeldmanAlphonso LingisPaola BacchettaMarjorie PerloffJames MartelEli FriedlanderWayne KoestenbaumSimon PorzakJohn BrenkmanJoseph VoglMieke BalChristopher BrackenStefanos GeroulanosMartin CrowleyMichael MarderLisa Hofmann-KurodaPeter Connor and Avital Ronell cofounded Qui Parle at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1980s. The journal set up shop at the height of the conservative restoration, against the Reagan-Thatcher alliance and its full-scale assault on the public sector, including the of and from to a of at a brief to the first of the journal. 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Authors unavailable

IntroductionDiscipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, originally published in 1975, provided a genealogical analysis of prison as a model for disciplinary society, focusing on fundamental shift from sovereign disciplinary power. This new kind of that displaces liberal juridico-political theory of sovereignty also marks modernity in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is historically witnessed by demise of torture as a public spectacle and rise of a legal-scientific complex and its continuous effects as a distributed form of public power. exposed disciplinary as birth of humane sciences focused on greater humanity, reform and humanization of penalties that obscured workings of as a set of techniques for coercion of individuals operating directly on training of body. By appealing Bentham's panopticum also analyzed dominant institutions of prison, military, school, and factory in terms of disciplinary technologies that at once house, compartmentalize, distribute, normalize, and individualize bodies in creation of modern subjects. The carceral archipelago makes these penitentiary techniques central disciplinary society. In Society Must be Defended (and later works) given as a series of lectures in 1976 confirms his aim discuss theory of right in terms of a methodology that does not analyze as rule-governed and legitimate forms of with a single center but to understand by looking at it extremities (p. 27) where it operates in institutions as capillary where it transgresses rules of right and is embodied in techniques and exercised in networks - as a microphysics of power. Disciplinary was necessary correlate of industrial capitalism and cannot be justified in terms of juridical theory of sovereignty. Against Hobbes and Leviathan model of State he goes on develop his conception of biopower as power over life - from as body man as species - and correct his earlier overemphasis on disciplinary power.Gilles Deleuze (1992) comments: Foucault located disciplinary in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; they reach their height at outset of twentieth. They initiate organization of vast spaces of enclosure. He acknowledges Foucault's brilliant analysis of institutions of but also comments how recognizes that just as disciplinary succeeded of sovereignty, so too of control began replace disciplinary as all spaces of enclosure experienced a generalized crisis due cybernetic epistemology that developed in post-war period. Deleuze (1992), by reference William Burroughs, goes on name of control as emerging form of society replacing disciplinary where open rather than closed forms of enclosure support a free-floating logic of modulation based on dominance of computers that opens schools and other institutions directly market forces of global capitalism. I will argue that within societies of control, if we are adopt Deleuze's term, or what I prefer call the epoch of digital reason, education rather than prison becomes primary model institution of social control that breaks mold of spatial enclosure of classroom or lecture hall, adopt different forms of digital logic that turn classroom and lecture hall inside out. The spatial enclosure becomes spatialized in a different manner as loose, scaleable and connected networks that take on global proportion that in every way exceeds State and its territory. This process of digital logic opening up spaces of enclosure provides a very different institutional setting, much decentralized and autonomous within network but linked in such a way that constitutes a system for data harvest of all behavioral characteristics. …

Alan Cunningham

The increasing collective use of distributed application software platforms, programming languages and crypto-currencies around the blockchain concept for general transactions may have radical implications for the way in which society conceptualises and applies trust and trust-based social systems such as law. By exploring one iteration of such generalised blockchain systems – Ethereum – and the historical lineage of such systems, it will be argued that indeed their ideological basis is largely one of distrust, decentralisation and, ultimately, via increasing disassociation of identity, a fear of the body itself. This ideological basis can be reframed as a crypto-legal approach to the problems of human interaction, one whereby the purely technological solutions outlined above are considered adequate for reconciling many of the problems of our collective existence. The article concludes, however, by re-iterating a perspective of law more so as an entirely embodied and trust dependent notion. These aspects go some way to explaining the necessarily centralised role it takes on within societies. They also explain why the crypto-legal approaches advanced by systems like Ethereum – or even the co-opting of blockchain technology by law firms themselves – will only ever be at best efficiency exercises concerned with the processing of data relating to legal affairs, and not the more radical, ambiguous and difficult process of actual legal thought or, indeed, engagement with trust.

Mark Coeckelbergh, Wessel Reijers

Transitions in monetary technologies raise novel ethical and philosophical questions. One prominent transition concerns the introduction of cryptocurrencies, which are digital currencies based on blockchain technology. Bitcoin is an example of a cryptocurrency. In this paper we discuss ethical issues raised by cryptocurrencies by conceptualising them as what we call "narrative technologies". Drawing on the work of Ricoeur and responding to the work of Searle, we elaborate on the social and linguistic dimension of money and cryptocurrencies, and explore the implications of our proposed theoretical framework for the ethics of cryptocurrencies. In particular, taking a social-narrative turn, we argue that technologies have a temporal and narrative character: that they are made sense of by means of individual and collective narratives but also themselves co-constitute those narratives and inter-human and social relations; configuring events in a meaningful temporal whole. We show how cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin dynamically re-configure social relations and explore the consequent ethical implications.

Geeta Dayal

No abstract is available for this record.

Anastasia Michailaki

No abstract is available for this record.

Thea Johnson

QUITO, Ecuador—The prosecutor stands to deliver her opening statement in the case. She wears a tight, electric-blue dress that comes to mid-thigh. Standing on her matching stiletto heels, she turns toward the three-judge panel at the front of the room and lays out her case against the defendant. The defendant, she begins, had cut down an ancient and valuable tree, thereby committing a crime against the property owner and the state. Her opening statment is short, mostly read from the page in front of her. The judges, two middle-aged men and a young woman in her early 30 s, listen intently from their seats behind a folding table. They face the audience, crammed into two narrow rows at the back of the room, and are flanked to the left by the prosecution team and to the right by the defendant and his lawyer, all seated at creaky folding tables. The defendant—a dark-skinned, middle-aged man in a short-sleeve button-down blue shirt—sits listlessly, his arms folded across his chest. His lawyer takes occasional notes during the opening statement, but mostly looks down at the thin binder before him. Everyone in the room—audience, judges, and lawyers—sits in folding chairs. Next to the judges is the clerk of the court at a computer. Besides that, the room is barren.It wouldn’t be much of a room if not for the spectacular view out of the dirty glass windows that take up the entire length of the left-side wall. From each, rise the sloping peaks and craggy, green ridges of the Andean mountain range that surround Quito, the capital city of Ecuador. The trial in this tiny sixth-floor courtroom on a foggy Friday morning is part of a grand experiment. Ecuador has taken a step toward an adversarial system of criminal justice. The heart of this experiment—public, oral trials—is coming to life here in this small, non-descript space.Until the 1990 s, almost all Latin American countries had strict inquisitorial systems. So all decision-making was centralized in the judge, who was, in theory, a neutral party tasked with discovering the truth in a criminal case and rendering a verdict and sentence. The process was closed to the public and based entirely on a written dossier compiled by a public prosecutor and handed off to the judge for decision. The problems with this system in a region with a history of corruption as rich as Latin America are obvious and became even more so as many Latin American countries struggled under the weight of soaring drug-related arrests in the 1990 s. The solution posed by some both in and out of the region was a move toward an American-style adversarial system, where a defense attorney and a prosecutor duke it out in a public forum before a judge or jury until the parties reach, through this healthy back-and-forth, the truth. Or the truth as decided by the judge or jury, who watch the process and then mete out justice. The “oral” adversarial system (or accusatorial system, as it also often called), the argument went, would shine a light into the shrouded and corrupt criminal justice structures in place in Latin America.And so a slow wave began away from the inquisitorial investigation model and toward an accusatorial template. It began in fits ands starts. Ecuador adopted a constitutional amendment in 2000 that required all provinces in the country to adopt an adversarial prototype. But judges had little understanding of what it meant to have an “oral” system and, searching for a solution, began reading the record and their verdicts aloud into tape recorders in their offices. This was technically “oral,” but certainly not adversarial.As the groundwork began to take shape, a litany of issues remained unresolved. How, for instance, do you develop rules of evidence when none have ever existed? How about burdens of proof at the pre-trial, trial, and appellate levels? And how can you develop rules and precedents when no one in the country is trained to act in the roles typically required in an adversarial system—a vigorous defense bar; a neutral, but zealous public prosecutors’ office; and a judge whose job is not to be a main stage performer, but rather a ring-master of the circus before him?These were the sorts of questions that faced at least 15 Latin American nations as they transitioned to a new criminal justice regime. This conversion has occurred at some level in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico (in some states), Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. And what’s unusual about this dedication of effort and resources to criminal justice is that Latin Americans have never been particularly passionate about the topic.Historically, crime has been dealt with officially by the most local municipality and, unofficially, by the community. In places like Peru and Brazil, for instance, which have experienced a significant upsurge in street crime, the electorate has consistently rejected political candidates who run on a “tough on crime” platform. When Alberto Fujimori of Peru used the same tactics against common street criminals that had proved so successful against the Shining Path guerrilla group, voter response was negative. Latin America has just never been very into “Law & Order.”In many Latin American countries, the assumption has been that fairness in the arena of criminal justice is a pipe dream, particularly for the poor and underclass. Ximena Ortiz Crespo, a former Congresswoman and current professor of Ecuadorian history at the International University of Ecuador, explains that in places like Ecuador, “law is not present in people’s lives,” and when it does poke its head out, people run the other way. You’d rather pay a police officer to make the case “go away” than pay a lawyer down the road to defend you in a court you don’t trust or believe in. In Ecuador, she explains, there is a saying that goes la justicia es solamente para los de poncho, or justice tends to fall only on those who wear ponchos—the indigenous who inhabit the lowest rungs of the social and economic ladder. Criminal justice has long been an after-thought.And yet, many Latin American countries have shown surprising dedication to improving and making more robust their criminal justice systems. In Ecuador, this has meant a series of changes, including instituting public, oral trials and opening the first ever Public Defender’s Office.One Wednesday afternoon, the doors of the Office of the Public Defender at the bustling corner of Robles and 6 de Diciembre are wide open, with a steady flow of people washing through the empty space. Inside, cubicles are filled with young lawyers, fresh out of law school, typing away at computers or chatting with a revolving crowd of concerned family members, inquiring about the lawyer’s incarcerated “users” (in Ecuador represented defendants are called usarios, or “users” of the system). The fledgling lawyers, who grew up watching syndicated episodes of “Law & Order” and “CSI” on Ecuadorian television, never knew a model of criminal justice before the adversarial system. This lack of institutional memory is one of their greatest assets. As Ernesto Pazmiño, Chief Public Defender for Ecuador, explains, the criminal justice system is going through a “total cultural change” that will require the justice sector to reimagine itself. It’s a sentiment on the lips of many in the field—that this shift from an inquisitorial to an adversarial model requires not merely a change in infrastructure or procedure, but a fundamental reshaping of Ecuadorian legal culture. It is the public defenders who are best poised to make this change.One such public defender, Demetrio Santander, understands the procedure from arrest to sentence to appeal in the current Ecuadorian criminal justice system. Some parts are working well and are fully adversarial in nature, while others are still developing. At 26-years-old, Demetrio is typical of many public defenders in the office—young, dedicated, and bright (he’ll be leaving the office in less than a month to pursue a masters at Oxford through a scholarship program run by the Ecuadorian government). He knows how the system works and, more importantly, how it’s supposed to work.Many times, the public defenders—required to represent all indigent defendants in the system and even non-indigent defendants who fail to hire their own attorneys—are those most familiar with the adversarial system. They’ve learned cross-examination from veteran criminal attorneys from the United States and other countries who come to provide training through the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative and other programs. They know when to object to the introduction of evidence and how to formulate a case theory. One afternoon, a group of supervisors who head up units assigned to each phase of the new system gather in an office. They are young, energetic, and largely female. In considering why they became public defenders, they talk about their passion for justice, their desire to protect the most vulnerable members of society, and their love of a good fight. They are the face of the new criminal justice system.The great benefit of this transition is what many Ecuadorian lawyers, judges, and politicians refer to as publicidad, essentially the opening up of the process to the public. During the Friday morning trial of the accused tree-killer, anyone could walk into the non-descript building that serves as the courthouse, past the guard chatting quietly on his cell phone, hike up the six flights of stairs (the lone elevator is busted), and slip into the seats set up for the audience. The age-old issue of corruption is far from gone. Indeed many lawyers suggest it’s very much alive, but the opening of the forum has forced all parties to account, in some measure, for their actions. Prosecutors must charge people publicly. Judges no longer review evidence or announce decisions in the privacy of chambers. Defendants have advocates who are required by the constitution to represent their interests. In fact, the constitution adopted in 2008 is unprecedented in the guarantees promised by the state to the accused. The commitment to due process in the law is clear. At least that’s the theory.The picture on the ground, though, is not nearly as rosy. In contrast to the robustness of the public defender’s office, the reputation of the judges and prosecutors, who populate the new system, is somewhat less stellar. While public defenders simply never existed before 2007, judges and prosecutors—largely holdovers from the ancient regime—have had to adjust to new roles that shifted the nature of their power in the system. At this point, there are still no juries in Ecuador and trials are presided over by a three-judge panel.Prosecutors, who never had a meaningful relationship with the police, except to accept the police paper work and put it neatly into the dossier they prepared for the judge, now have full investigatory responsibilities that involve their cooperation and integration with the police force. Neither side has responded well to this forced friendship. And, judges, once the center of the party, are now left to twiddle their thumbs until prosecutors come to the table with the results of their investigations and their own formulation of the charges.Judges also haven’t escaped the taint of corruption that lingers from the days of the inquisitorial system. Although President Rafael Correa overhauled the justice system when he entered office in 2006, booting a number of judges and installing a host of new judges and administrators, the result was as much an end to old corruption as it was an assurance that the judiciary and the executive would stay closely connected going forward. Indeed, one of the first cases to come through this new network on the civil side, that has won worldwide attention, is the topsy-turvy, never-ending litigation between the Chevron corporation and a group of Indians from the Amazon region of Ecuador. Chevron, which tried for a decade to get the case moved from the United States to Ecuador under forums non conveniens grounds, is now slinging mud at the Ecuadorian justice system in foreign and domestic courts around the world, claiming the system is corrupt to its core. These protestations, though, come on the heels of a $19 billion award against Chevron.Indeed the power and presence of Correa is of huge importance to the future of the transition. The constitution that inaugurated an adversarial criminal justice system was adopted before Correa came to power, during a time when Ecuador saw eight presidents in nine years. Bumper stickers from the last election in Ecuador read, Ya tenemos Presidente, or “Already we have a President.” The slogan is tremendously popular, and it’s not hard to understand the power of a message that basically says—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.Correa has ruled over Ecuador for seven years during a time of relative stability and rising income equality. He has lowered child labor rates, improved medical care across the board, and focused on educational reform. But he has also been accused of wielding tremendous political influence over every aspect of Ecuadorian life, most recently in a series of high profile cases he has launched against the press in Ecuador. Like the presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia, he’s also committed to lessening, not strengthening, U.S. influence in his country. This is a president who has hosted the mother of Julian Assange personally for a sit-down talk, but not the current United States ambassador.What this means for the transition to an adversarial system in Ecuador remains to be seen. USAID, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, were early funders and supporters of the transition to an accusatorial model in Ecuador, providing both training and for the has began to out of the country as it that the two nations are not on the same page on a range of including the of that through Ecuador. The lack of U.S. does not put the entire at Ecuador is far in the transition to back But it does that the commitment to training and building infrastructure in the justice sector will have to come from the Ecuadorian going so of the justice or to be a number one for the Indeed, while is in for the building of new and the of the building case to a new legal not to many many of the old problems that the new system was to is of the of for many who are and a lack of in for those of no one so an arrest on a crime to Public defenders to their by a of other making it for side to about the case. remains been only from the of in the 1990 s, which to but little in the system to The sentence for the of of is still years in One public many people in are longer for than for Although a new criminal is its toward the lack of in means that the man trial on that foggy Friday morning for down a could get a month in for one and up to years if there were others is all this in working toward a new system is a adversarial system is a good The adversarial system in the is in the United and that system is by from arrest to and of even President Correa understands all of His was in the for a of into the United States and to and a years in an American behind was a young who would tremendous his and would one be president of their years for but those years away in a American for a common have improved his of remains the adversarial system has to and is often as a country that has in a adversarial commitment to the transition process has been through the dedication of meaningful to the justice sector and by working closely with the United The is a more and just system of criminal justice, but part of this commitment has also been the of From to 2007, was in Colombia, there were of defendants a as to who were a is the greatest of the adversarial system in the United It behind closed doors and with little or no record of what has occurred between the prosecutor and the defendant and his on a wide it some of the most inquisitorial of the former system—a process of the countries that have adopted it as the for criminal the presence of an adversarial system is no of or justice. The come from understanding and the fundamental behind the accusatorial model that a country like Ecuador to a more and less corrupt criminal justice to this is to jury are one of the of an adversarial system. for jury was at the of early in Latin America against an adversarial As a on adversarial in Latin has the early was a time of over how to criminal procedure in the Latin American nations with the of toward an adversarial system or a system of both the accusatorial and inquisitorial though, Latin American they and the jury as well as oral and public their were not for lack of juries a of this have had a passion for it has often come in the of street the eight presidents in almost as many that has put the on that of with of or civil or not that’s the it that jury is the of this desire for from the street to the to the process of justice. and a in their and this is of so much as a jury system. In a country where people have long that justice on those in indigenous men and as well as of all on juries is a to and with the system. It’s of that juries are an to and take a at the jury room in the of American And in Ecuador and in Latin they are certainly to even more so than the other in the system, they and don’t have to to anyone about the they But are not to up on the some of in from and a new of Ecuador is prepared than ever before to with jury don’t much if cases don’t get to One of the greatest to the adversarial process in the United States is that, by most than of cases end up at While trials means more it also means that almost no one in the system is the right to a trial by his or her about in Ecuador are very but at this there be trials and of oral trials are the heart of the system, and they the country. One to this is to make that prosecutors and public defenders are and which Ecuador to be good between two is what a trial to make trials is to the on the system This can be by the instituting of to people in while their cases are in don’t they The more defendants get the to in their the of a more they will to But and must also be for the system to if works as it from arrest through trial, if remains and are the of the system has and the presence of trials will be by the presence of filled with people in for the many questions around this most with a in the process is at the of the of Ecuador to the state prosecutor transition to a system of case The office is in the former U.S. a with the of a The building is by that and like across the the lawyers back and between and a in the he’s new to the office, there is on no on his no not even a But he the same passion for his work as was at the office of his the public As to Ecuador will transition fully and to an adversarial system at some point, he his head His away his in the and city of in the of Ecuador. He that he has no that Ecuador will have a successful and fully adversarial system. we are here like building a he are building it for