We would love to discuss the new law on e-money, the officialrecognition of open-source licenses, or liberalization of corporate legislation(the likes of permission to exercise stock options and issue convertiblenotes).

Instead, the Ukrainian reality fits in the Bloomberg’s articleabout the number of consecutive police searches in Ukrainian IT-companies.While our Ministry of Economy urgently discusses the searches in IT-companieswith the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the business itself creates call-centersfor the victims of such searches.

No wonder, that this kind of background has dimmed the news onenactment of the law on e-commerce.

“No matter, how late the law was adopted. While it is not asperfect as the U.S Constitution, the adoption of this law is nevertheless a bigleap. Unlike the ones adopted in Russia and Kazakhstan, the Ukrainian law wasdrafted by representatives of respective business for their own use. It isbased on the analogous European laws, although with lots of cuts andsimplifications (because otherwise the regulators refused to approve the draftlaw).

As a result, e-shops finally get out of the “grey zone” sincedeemed equal to the ordinary offline retail. Electronic documents are finallyconsidered by tax authorities and law enforcement agencies as a form of validcontracts”, notes Dmytro Gadomsky, Attorney-at-law, Partner ofIT & Media Law Practice at Juscutum Attorneys Association.

Anyway, watchthe cartoon: it contains everything one needs to get an overall impressionon the law and decide if it’s worth reading.