March 04, 2013

Preorder my new book: The Electronic Silk Road

My new book, The Electronic Silk Road: How the Web Binds the World Together in Commerce, will appear in little more than a month from Yale University Press.  Amazon is offering the cloth edition for an amazing $18.48!  

Here are some of the early reviews:

Posted by Anupam Chander on March 4, 2013 at 09:11 PM in Books, Digitization, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 30, 2012

The next generation, smarter than ours

Posted by Anupam Chander on May 30, 2012 at 11:46 AM in Globalization, Life | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 08, 2012

White House Issues Major Statement on Internet Policy

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has issued an important statement on Internet policy:

Members of the business community have expressed concern that some national governments seek to balkanize the Internet by establishing barriers to the free flow of information under the pretext of protecting cybersecurity, social stability, or local economies.  This is contrary to President Obama's vision of an Internet that is interoperable the world over, and the United States will vigorously oppose such barriers.  Further, these regulatory actions would create a confusing array of “local Internets,” establishing different rules for different places.  Firms may cease to offer services outside the country in which they are based if a variety of domestic regulations makes it too complicated or too costly.

The statement embraces a multistakeholder view of Internet regulation.

Posted by Anupam Chander on May 8, 2012 at 04:23 PM in Digitization, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 29, 2012

The Difficulty of Taxing Digital Products: Case Study Apple

The New York Times examines Apple's tax avoidance practices. There's no suggestion that there is anything illegal in these activities.

Apple serves as a window on how technology giants have taken advantage of tax codes written for an industrial age and ill suited to today’s digital economy. Some profits at companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft derive not from physical goods but from royalties on intellectual property, like the patents on software that makes devices work. Other times, the products themselves are digital, like downloaded songs. It is much easier for businesses with royalties and digital products to move profits to low-tax countries than it is, say, for grocery stores or automakers. A downloaded application, unlike a car, can be sold from anywhere.

... Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean. Today, that tactic is used by hundreds of other corporations — some of which directly imitated Apple’s methods, say accountants at those companies.

...For instance, one of Apple’s subsidiaries in Luxembourg, named iTunes S.à r.l., has just a few dozen employees, according to corporate documents filed in that nation and a current executive. The only indication of the subsidiary’s presence outside is a letterbox with a lopsided slip of paper reading “ITUNES SARL.”

...Luxembourg has just half a million residents. But when customers across Europe, Africa or the Middle East — and potentially elsewhere — download a song, television show or app, the sale is recorded in this small country, according to current and former executives. In 2011, iTunes S.à r.l.’s revenue exceeded $1 billion, according to an Apple executive, representing roughly 20 percent of iTunes’s worldwide sales.

...

tax experts say that strategies like the Double Irish help explain how Apple has managed to keep its international taxes to 3.2 percent of foreign profits last year, to 2.2 percent in 2010, and in the single digits for the last half-decade, according to the company’s corporate filings.

... Apple reported in its last annual disclosures that $24 billion — or 70 percent — of its total $34.2 billion in pretax profits were earned abroad, and 30 percent were earned in the United States

Important reporting by Charles Duhigg and David Kocieniewski, which will hopefully spark a conversation about these practices.

Posted by Anupam Chander on April 29, 2012 at 07:12 AM in Digitization, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 24, 2012

BBC Reports on Diaspora Bonds

Peter Day devotes an episode of his wonderful BBC Global Business to the study of Diaspora Bonds. For my original article on the subject, see Diaspora Bonds, NYU Law Review (2001).

He intervies the World Bank economist Dilip Ratha, who has done tremendous work advancing the concept.

Posted by Anupam Chander on April 24, 2012 at 11:07 AM in Globalization, International Finance | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 05, 2012

Why Third Party Audits Are Necessary

Nick Kristoo of the  New York Times reports on a new study:

It turns out that arsenic has routinely been fed to poultry (and sometimes hogs) because it reduces infections and makes flesh an appetizing shade of pink. There’s no evidence that such low levels of arsenic harm either chickens or the people eating them, but still...

Big Ag doesn’t advertise the chemicals it stuffs into animals, so the scientists conducting these studies figured out a clever way to detect them. Bird feathers, like human fingernails, accumulate chemicals and drugs that an animal is exposed to. So scientists from Johns Hopkins University and Arizona State University examined feather meal — a poultry byproduct made of feathers.

Consumers had little opportunity to learn that arsenic was used in the chicken we eat, and thus third party auditing proves useful once again.

Posted by Anupam Chander on April 5, 2012 at 02:59 PM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 28, 2012

Follow the American Soc'y of Int'l Law Meeting Online Via ASILCables

A new project, ASIL Cables, will allow people to follow and comment on the annual meeting of the ASIL--the premiere international law meeting each year in the United States.  The project is the brainchild of Tai-Heng Cheng, who is serving as its editor.

Follow it here.

Video of the conference will eventually become available through Fora.TV.

Posted by Anupam Chander on March 28, 2012 at 09:55 AM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 01, 2012

IEEE Podcast on My New Paper: How Law Made Silicon Valley

You can preview my new paper here, in this podcast published by IEEE--the main society for electrical engineers.

Thanks to interviewer Steven Cherry and producer Barbara Finkelstein for readily grasping my argument, and doing a great job in the interview.

Posted by Anupam Chander on March 1, 2012 at 08:29 PM in Digitization, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 10, 2012

Should the United States Continue to Occupy Guantanamo?

Jonathan Hansen argues that we should return Guantanamo to the people of Cuba in an op-ed in the NY Times.  I made a similar call five years ago in my piece, Quit Guantanamo in the SF Chronicle.

Posted by Anupam Chander on January 10, 2012 at 08:42 PM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 02, 2012

Thank you, Gordon Hirabayashi

Gordon Hirabayashi, who, along with Fred Korematsu, Mitsuye Endo, and Min Yasui, challenged the unconstitutional and racist Internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, has passed away, according to a reliable report.  

Lorraine K. Bannai, Professor of Legal Skills, Director, Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, and a member of the Korematsu coram nobis team, is helping to organize a conference in his honor:

Posted by Anupam Chander on January 2, 2012 at 05:05 PM in Dissent, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack