E-Commerce Law & Policy

Volume: 1 Issue: 1
(January 1999)

News

UK based Creation Records, which is 49% owned by Sony, the Japanese electronics and entertainment group has shelved plans to put new singles free on the internet after Sony made plain their opposition to the move. / read more

There has been enormous interest from potential participating banks, both in Europe and around the world, in the recently announced global certification authority for digital signatures, is the message from founder member Barclays Bank. / read more

European Telecommunications Ministers are hoping that the next meeting of the Telecoms Council on 22 April 1999 in Luxembourg will resolve disagreements about electronic signatures. At their last meeting in Brussels in November Ministers, despite high expectations, failed to agree a common position for the rules governing electronic signatures. / read more

The House of Commons Trade & Industry Committee has decided to inquire into all aspects of electronic commerce from a UK, European and global perspective, including: / read more

Features

Electronic commerce is reaching critcal mass. In just the last week Sotheby's announced it was investing $25 million in online auctions, High Street retailer Dixon's six month old Internet Service Provider, Freeserve, revealed they are fast approaching a million subscribers, while reports indicate that online share dealing is becoming a mass market operation. / read more

The DTI is to issue a consultation document on the Government’s Electronic Commerce Bill this month and expects the Bill to be published by Easter. / read more

OFTEL will be the licensing authority for cryptographic services, DTI Minister, Barbara Roche announced in October last year. / read more

The government is hoping to appoint the ‘digital envoy’ to work with government and industry to sell electronic commerce to Britain and British electronic commerce to the world by mid February. / read more

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the interests of the major recording companies has agreed to work with technology companies to develop a standard for the secure distribution of digital music. / read more

BT has bought 50 per cent of the UK business of Excite, one of the biggest US internet portal groups, for £6 million. / read more

The 33 nation agreement to impose export controls on encryption technology has been attacked by leading industry figures as a major set back to the development of e-commerce. / read more

Leading providers of cryptographic security technologies and solutions, including Certicom, Ernst & Young, Fujitsu, GTE CyberTrust, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola announced the creation of the Standards for Efficient Cryptography Group (SECG). / read more

A US District Court has ruled that the Loudon County, Virginia policy requiring filtering software in public libraries violates the First Amendment by preventing adults from accessing constitutionally protected materials. / read more

EU-US talks aimed at resolving data privacy issues arising from the European Data Protection Directive are continuing into the Spring. The lack of US legislation on data protections means that EU States might ban export of data to the US. / read more

The Article 31 Committee is expected to start giving positive approval to countries in February with Switzerland being suggested as one of the first likely to qualify. / read more

US Federal District Judge Lowell A Reed Jnr has issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act on the grounds that the American Civil Liberties Union and other associated groups had shown ‘a likelihood of success’ in their case that the recently passed law violates the First Amendment free speech rights of adults. / read more

Although the Directive should have been implemented by October 24, there remains strong divergence between data protection regimes across the EU States. / read more

The UK in common with many other Member States is late in implementing the European Data Protection Directive and although the Data Protection Act 1998 has received Royal Assent, the 1984 Data Protection Act continues to apply. / read more

Marks & Spencer is a founding member of the Global Business Dialogue on E-Commerce, which was launched at the begining of January in New York. / read more

The United States and Korea underlined their commitment to the growth of e-commerce through a joint statement issued in November 1998. / read more

US President Bill Clinton gave further backing to the development of e-commerce in his update on the work of his Administration in implementing his Directive on Electronic Commerce of July 1 1997. / read more

The United States and Australia underlined their commitment to the growth of e-commerce through a joint statement issued at the beginning of November. / read more

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has announced its appointments to the ICANN Membership Advisory Committee. / read more

The WIPO’s Final Report on the Management of Internet Domain Names and Addresses will be presented to ICANN and member States in March 1999. The recommendations in the Interim Report which came out just before Christmas focus on the development of effective contractual arrangements for domain name registrations, and suggest a number of important improvements: / read more

Despite the impeachment hearings, the US Congress did manage to enact four significant electronic commerce Acts at the end of 1998. / read more

Last year there were 103,145 new domain names registered with Nominet UK, the registrar of .uk domain names, an increase of almost 80 per cent on 1997. / read more

AOL has launched nine anti-spamming cases in five US states. AOL, who has been at the forefront in combating junk e-mail, also announced just before Christmas, that they had won three of their current junk e-mail cases. / read more

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About E-Commerce Law & Policy:

The monthly law journal giving authoratitive insights into all aspects of e-commerce law and regulations affecting online business, including domain names, Intellectual property, copyrights, online advertising, behavourial advertising, cloud computing, net neutrality, privacy, cybercrime, social media, trademarks, online sales, licensing and software / read more