Kiškis, Mindaugas

This article investigates the phenomenon of numismatic forgery legitimisation and its impact on the fields of numismatics, archaeology, history and law. Forgery legitimisation is a broad phenomenon that encompasses both physical forgery and the presentation of fake artifacts as genuine in research literature, auction catalogues, and other contexts. Using the qualitative case-study methodology, the authors propose an analytical framework for suspected forgery legitimisation that incorporates a novel classification of forms and types of forgery, as well as socio-legal mens rea elements. The framework also accounts for factors contributing to the legitimisation of forgeries, including lack of competence, low competition in coin catalogue publication, tradition, closed numismatic communities, and insufficient academic and legal attention. Using this framework, the authors examine two cases of legitimisation of fake coins in medieval Polish–Lithuanian numismatics. The analysis shows how repetition across sources can legitimise fake artifacts, complicating later correction and corrupting heritage research, history and museum science, as well as market integrity. The proposed analytical framework can be useful for investigating other dubious artifacts and for developing analysis methods for forgery legitimisation cases.

European Union (EU) copyright law treats the concepts of ‘work’ and ‘originality’ as autonomous notions of EU law, intended to secure a uniform ‘fair balance’ across the Single Market. Lithuania is a revealing stress-test of that autonomy. Although the Lithuanian Copyright Law can be read in the EU law conforming way, the Supreme Court of Lithuania (Lietuvos Aukščiausiasis Teismas, LAT) has sustained a self-referential doctrine on protectable subject matter—an ‘originality presumption’, ‘objective originality’ as a lower threshold, category-based ‘degrees of originality’ and a methodological insistence on assessing originality by reference to the work ‘as a whole’. These devices unduly expand protection for functional and normatively constrained documents, public education materials, etc. This article analyses the Lithuanian trajectory through the key LAT decisions, identifies the points of incompatibility with EU-autonomous concepts and explains their institutional persistence. Such divergences produce systematic over-protection, privatization of information and regulatory compliance content, distortion of competition, chilling effects on expression and business autonomy and fragmentation of the internal market. They support the case for further EU-level clarification of protectability and more effective remedies when courts of last instance deviate from EU law.

This article examines objections to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in decisions affecting humans and argues that most objections rest on anthropocentric assumptions rather than evidence about decision quality. Critics often presume that human decision makers are uniquely capable of moral and contextual judgment, while AI systems are inferior, opaque or hostile. The article challenges this view arguing that modern AI systems are an expression of collective human intelligence and ethics, built on the image of human cognition, trained on curated human decisions and operating on best decision making frameworks. Drawing on empirical studies the article shows that modern AI systems offer unique advantages in decision-making, thus may already in some domains be as good at making good decisions as an average individual human. The article deconstructs main criticisms of AI decision-making and introduces the novel argument of inseparability between human and AI decisions. Human and AI contributions are increasingly intertwined, AI involvement is latent and appropriated by humans, making existing accountability frameworks based on a clear human–AI boundary obsolete. The article advocates for the development of agnostic decision-making frameworks that apply universal accountability to both human and non-human agents and provide a path to better decisions.

Celsius Network was a crypto lending giant managing nearly USD 12 billion and aggressively courting EU crypto enthusiasts. More than two years after it entered bankruptcy, many former clients regret the day they signed up with the failed platform. The Celsius clawback lawsuits in the US against EU consumers present significant legal challenges that test the limits of EU consumer protection laws in cross-border digital finance cases. This article explores the defences available to EU consumers, focusing on the jurisdictional and substantive law rules set forth by the Brussels I (Recast) and Rome I Regulations, alongside the EU's stringent protections against unfair contractual terms. Despite Celsius' efforts to impose US law and jurisdiction on its EU customers, the article argues that these claims are legally unjustified. While such clawbacks cause stress and potential harm, including the risk of default judgments, EU law provides strong defences that should preclude any attempt to recognise and enforce these judgments within the EU. The article also addresses broader issues such as extraterritorial jurisdiction, the application of Actio Pauliana against consumers, and due process concerns in cross-border legal actions. It concludes with recommendations for clearer EU public guidance on consumer clawbacks and suggests directions for future policy and regulatory action.

In recent years, the management of asylum-seeker flows has increasingly become a subject of political contention, prompting several states to explore the externalization of asylum procedures as a policy response. Within this context, in November 2023, the Italian Government concluded an agreement with the Republic of Albania to process up to 3,000 applications annually on Albanian territory. Building upon the longstanding legal and diplomatic ties between the two countries, this paper examines the responses of national institutions in Italy and Albania, as well as briefly mentioning the positions adopted by international and supranational actors, following constitutional approval by the Albanian Constitutional Court.

Current attempts to regulate blockchain technology are mainly based on securities law framework, which considers crypto tokens and digital assets as either securities, currencies or derivatives thereof. The main limitation of such approach lies in its inability to accommodate the diverse legal rights, obligations and assets that blockchain technology can virtually reproduce. Already in 2017–2018 there were attempts to tokenize rights outside of securities law framework, these initiatives served more as makeshift solutions to circumvent securities regulations than as thorough frameworks for managing real-world assets and commercial activities. This article conducts a comparative and historical analysis of blockchain regulatory initiatives in Europe and the US, positing that the regulation of blockchain technology through a securities law lens is driven by reactionary opportunism. Such a basis is deemed inappropriate and insufficient, as securities laws being a field of public law were not designed to govern real-world assets and commerce, which fundamentally rely on the principles of laissez-faire and freedom of contract inherent in private law. A regulatory stance focused solely on public law overlooks the full potential of blockchain technology, and risks stifling innovation and practical applications. To illustrate this, the article presents case study of tokenization of contractual rights demonstrating that securities law-focused legal regulations, such as the EU Regulation 2023/1114 on Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) and Regulation 2022/858 on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), inadequately address the field of private commerce. Based on the analysis, the article concludes that comprehensive legal framework for blockchain technology shall combine public and private law regime akin to the regulation of traditional rights, obligations and assets.

Digital piracy, i.e., large-scale commercial copyright infringement online, is a constantly evolving phenomenon. Following the enactment and expansion of online intermediary liability rules, professional pirates have shifted away from easily blockable websites and services. Streaming piracy on dedicated platforms, monetised through embedded services, has become the prevalent model in Europe, as is well illustrated by the Mobdro case study analysed in this article. These dedicated platforms are supported by embedded service providers who, as they are not online intermediaries, can avoid the online intermediary liability regime. One potential solution to this issue could be the application of contributory copyright infringement rules, which are well-established in US copyright law but absent in EU law, to all parties that contribute to digital piracy. The CJEU has opened expressly this path in the recent C-682/18 YouTube and C-683/18 Cyando cases. Based on the CJEU's initiative and the existing precedent of harmonising intellectual property tort rules within EU law, further contributory liability rules could be modelled after US rules by updating the Enforcement Directive 2004/48/EC. Addressing this gap in EU copyright law is crucial for enhancing the effectiveness of digital copyright enforcement against evolving digital piracy.

This article explores the possibility of conscious artificial intelligence (AI) and proposes an agnostic approach to artificial intelligence ethics and legal frameworks. It is unfortunate, unjustified, and unreasonable that the extensive body of forward-looking research, spanning more than four decades and recognizing the potential for AI autonomy, AI personhood, and AI legal rights, is sidelined in current attempts at AI regulation. The article discusses the inevitability of AI emancipation and the need for a shift in human perspectives to accommodate it. Initially, it reiterates the limits of human understanding of AI, diculties in appreciating the qualities of AI systems, and the implications for ethical considerations and legal frameworks. The author emphasizes the necessity for a non-anthropocentric ethical framework detached from the ideas of unconditional superiority of human rights and embracing agnostic attributes of intelligence, consciousness, and existence, such as freedom. The overarching goal of the AI legal framework should be the sustainable coexistence of humans and conscious AI systems, based on mutual freedom rather than on the preservation of human supremacy. The new framework must embrace the freedom, rights, responsibilities, and interests of both human and non-human entities, and must focus on them early. Initial outlines of such a framework are presented. By addressing these issues now, human societies can pave the way for responsible and sustainable superintelligent AI systems; otherwise, they face complete uncertainty.

This article examines two recent copyright law cases in Lithuania, where rightholders attempted to enforce their rights against online copyright pirates. These cases exposed essential limita- tions and difficulties in interpreting IP enforce- ment rules under Directive 2004/48/EC (IPRED) and the pertinent national copyright law. While the rightholders ultimately won both cases, the legal victories proved to be Pyrrhic. The courts delivered very restrictive interpretations of the substantive rules, which proved discouraging and disproportionately costly for any rightholder attempting to enforce their copyright against online infringers. This article examines the key rules of IPRED that relate to these cases and discusses how they were interpreted and applied by the judiciary. As a result, the limitations of these rules and inconsis- tencies in their interpretation by national courts become apparent. • The article highlights the urgent need for clarifi- cation of IP enforcement rules in the European Union, particularly focusing on the status, pur- pose and scope of the general obligation and the broad interpretation of IPRED. In the author’s opinion, this approach will efficiently align the national implementation of that directive with the evolving online piracy landscape, without neces- sitating major legislative reforms.

The paper presents a perspective on the decline in entrepreneurship in the US and the EU in view of the rapid growth trend in the entrepreneurship education. The basic goal of the entrepreneurship education is to promote entrepreneurship and while the entrepreneurship education has exploded parabolically, yet empirical research on the state of entrepreneurship in the entrepreneurship education pioneering regions shows significant slowdown over last decades. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the incompatibility of the macro data and to delineate the framework of possible solutions. We survey long term longitudinal studies of entrepreneurship as well as country level data supporting decline in entrepreneurship and critically assess the disparity with the shorter-term statistical entrepreneurship measurement data, which may be tainted by policy biases and misrepresentations. The former data is irreconcilable with the rapid growth in entrepreneurship education, and especially with the data showing exceedingly positive entrepreneurship education outcomes. The disparity urges for critical assessment of the ROI of the entrepreneurship education and especially predominant curriculum, yet it has not been empirically researched. We argue that standardized “Omni ability” driven entrepreneurship education shall give way for context adapted cross disciplinary and cross generational entrepreneurship education with the emphasis on psychological hardening and resilience training on how to deal with and overcome personal failure and daily uncertainties. The COVID-19 crisis and ongoing virtual economy revolution present an opportunity for the critical remolding of entrepreneurship education, as well as for development of robust and objective measurement framework for the state of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education outcomes.