Perilous Fires, Pandemics and Price Gouging: The Need to Protect Consumers from Unfair Pricing Practices during Times of Crisis

Recent crises affecting Australia, including the Black Summer bushfires and Coronavirus pandemic, have devastated social morale and crippled our economy. Countless lives and properties have been damaged or lost. These conditions have inflated demand for basic consumer goods and services, such as hygiene products, staple foods, and utility services. Sadly, some sellers have exploited public desperation, with widespread reports of price gouging. This notorious practice involves pricing high-demand essentials at levels significantly higher than what is commonly considered acceptable, reasonable or fair. This article critically analyses moral and economic arguments surrounding statutory controls before proposing a model law regulating price gouging during times of crisis. It argues that such a law is both essential and easily adaptable to Australia’s consumer law framework. The model law provides a basis for the federal government to consider desperately required change to ensure consumers do not suffer during current crises or those to come.

Civil Law Status of Transmission Equipment (Article 49 of the Polish Civil Code)

<p>The article provides an analysis of the civil law status of transmission equipment (devices) referred to in Article 49 of the Civil Code (transmission devices). Conducting business activity by a transmission entrepreneur in the field of utility services and waste disposal requires the use of transmission devices. These devices are located on real estate which are not owned by the entrepreneur and in a typical situation they remain permanently connected to such real estate. According to Article 49 of the Polish Civil Code, such devices do not constitute component parts of real estate if they are part of an enterprise. The assessment of the entry of transmission equipment into the composition of the enterprise and their ownership status, especially after entering the composition of the enterprise raises interpretation doubts. Determining who is the owner of transmission equipment is important because the owner of the equipment may be granted (Article 305¹ of the Civil Code) a transmission easement, which is a right related to the ownership of these devices. In this article, an attempt was made to resolve the aforementioned interpretation doubts.</p>

New Trends in Improving Public Service Delivery in Ukraine

In the aspect of the European integration aspirations of Ukrainian society and the social development of the nation state, the issues of its service function formation in the form of public services are becoming more and more relevant in Ukraine. It is worth noting that the functioning of the service state model in Ukraine is only at its initial stage and requires improvement of the institutional arrangements for the public services delivery, which involves taking into account existing problems of their delivery by public authorities in the process of deepening the local government reform and long-term restructuring of the national economy. The purpose of the article is to state the areas of concern in the system for providing administrative, social, housing and public utility services, and to define and elaborate on long-term trends for improving their functioning, as well as their common features and characteristics. The modern general and specific scientific research methods have provided the methodological basis for the research. Their use is based on a systematic approach. The analytical method was used to identify the problematic area of the branched public service delivery system. The comparative-functional and analytical methods were used to identify modern trends in improving the provision of administrative, social, housing and public utility services, their functioning, as well as their common features and characteristics. The research process has provided a comprehensive grounding and articulation of promising trends in improving the system of providing administrative, social and housing and public utility services in Ukraine and identifying their functional features and common characteristics

Study on the Management of the Domestic Sanitation Service in the Commune of Bosanci, Suceava County

In Romania, the management of public utility services is organized and performed in the following forms: direct management or indirect management or delegated management. In this article we have chosen as a model the public sanitation service in the commune of Bosanci and we want to highlight what is the best way to optimize this service, in direct management or delegated management. The public sanitation service in Bosanci is a public service that has been provided over time through both forms of management. The inhabitants of Bosanci were provided with the sanitation service both in direct management and in delegated management, respectively until the end of 2018 in delegated management, and starting with 2019 in direct management, and in order to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each form we will present comparatively the way in which the domestic sanitation service was provided, which currently benefits 7400 inhabitants.

Centralized management of Soviet town planning. 1931–1937

In the 1930s, as industrialization gathered pace, great hopes were laid on the centralized management of town planning as opposed to the assertiveness of large industrial institutions. In that period, the All-Union Council of Utility Services of the USSR Central Executive Committee had the highest status. Studying new materials deposited in the RF State Archives, the author revealed that even the all-union management structure regularly experienced difficulties which paralyzed its urban planning and reconstruction activities.

Organization of housing and communal services management in Moscow (using the Golyanovo District as an example)

Since the last decade of the XX century, the sphere of housing maintenance and utilities has been undergoing a period of reform. Its main goal is to transfer the activities of economic entities in this area to market principles, to carry out a comprehensive modernization of its infrastructure, to ensure the economical use of all types of resources, to expand the range and to improve the quality of housing and public utility services. The problem of the study is that in modern conditions the housing maintenance and utilities is among the key life-supporting sectors of administrative-territorial entities and acts as an objective indicator of the level and quality of the population well-being, which contradicts the low efficiency of the housing maintenance and utilities management in certain territories. In some districts of the city of Moscow, it is in sharp contrast to the general advanced innovative level of management and the state of housing maintenance and utilities in the Russian capital.

Graphical User Authentication Using Hybrid Visual Cryptographic Technique

User authentication is the important aspect while offering common and utility services. Most of the web services are authenticates the exact user by using the traditional login model but it has security risks. Graphical user authentication is the replacement to solve the issues in traditional model. This paper proposes a new graphical based user authentication model (VerCube) using a hybrid approach. This model implements the cryptographic technique and visual cryptographic representations.