EURIM Briefing 19 - APPENDIX K
Related Issues

Whilst President Clinton's electronic commerce policy document of 1st July 1997 titled "A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce" (see Appendix E), advocated a market orientated, self-regulatory, tariff-free approach to electronic commerce on the Internet, it nonetheless recognised the need to establish consumer and copyright protections, to create a predictable legal protection environment for electronic commerce and to protect privacy on-line, especially where children are involved.

Until such time as President Clinton's administration prepares its draft legislation to achieve the above, these issues remain contentious. In brief, they are as follows:-

Digitisation enables every type of audio-visual copyright material - text, sound, pictures - to be transmitted instantly over the Internet without the loss of quality, to be easily manipulated and, as such, open to widespread infringement.

Whilst existing laws in most industrialised countries already provide a sound basis of rights and protection for copyright holders and remedies for infringement at national level, the harmonisation of such rights, protections and remedies does not as yet exist in the wider international context of the Internet. (see EURIM briefing No.17).

These global on-line copyright issues have been recognised for sometime as an inhibiting factor in using the Internet for commerce in the wider scale. The European Union, OECD¹ and WIPO² have all of late prepared documents, proposals and treaties on these issues. However, it may be that President Clinton's proposed harmonising legislation will be required to be awaited before copyright owners, producers, distributors and consumers alike will be assured of enforceable global rights, protections and remedies.

Similar to the copyright issues above, digitisation and the use of Internet has greatly increased the opportunities to abuse a copyright holders entitlement to object to unauthorised modification of his work or to claim authorship of it (moral rights). Although the European Union's Follow-up to the Green Paper³ on Copyright and Related Rights, determined that further study was required on this issue before proposing any specific rights and remedies, it is hoped that the proposed 'Clinton' legislation will address this matter as equally essential to encourage the proper exploitation of copyright works over the Internet.

If it can be said that any one issue has been the catalyst to stimulate governments, institutions and nations alike into action with respect to material on the Internet, it must surely be the on-line availability of child pornography.

Although this matter is dealt with in the foregoing Briefing, the update on this issue, contained in President Clinton's policy document and following Ira Magaziner's discussion on that policy in London on July 11, 1997, it is proposed that in the first instance a self-regulatory policy be adopted, especially among Internet Service Providers, who would be charged with the responsibility of 'policing' (actively or passively?) content as well as the private sector encouraged to develop 'filtering' software products to ensure that access to such material cannot be made.

For users to feel comfortable using or doing business on the Internet, information about e.g. their location, likes and dislikes, marital status, number of children, types of purchases made on the Internet, etc - is all valuable data which can be obtained from the Internet, in some cases without the user's knowledge, and then used, distributed, re-distributed (especially to marketing organisations) without the knowledge or consent of the user.

It is proposed in President Clinton's Policy document that the private sector implement user-friendly, self-regulatory regimes so that e.g. 'Data Gatherers' should tell consumers what data they are collecting, how it is intended to be used and to give consumers the choice on such re-use.

In addition, fair information practices and dispute resolution are also to be addressed by the private sector.

To exploit the Internet as the global electronic marketplace, consumers must be able to purchase and pay for products and services over the Internet and suppliers to establish who purchased such goods or services and that they were received.

The enabling tool to secure such information, including credit/debit card and bank details, is cryptography (see EURIM Briefing No. 16).

Although cryptography has been used for many years in the military and government sphere, there is still a reluctance, especially within the US Government, to permit widespread encryption without 'key' recovery for reasons of national security.

Notwithstanding that reluctance, credit/debit card companies and banks are already using encryption to trade on the Internet. Only time will tell how secure that encryption is.