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What If That Online Flower Order Doesn't Arrive?
It may not be in good taste to mention disagreements on Valentine's Day, but issues of jurisdiction in cross-border online disputes are heating up and cannot be ignored. The debate on the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters is at the heart of the current controversy.
A tense and technical public meeting at the Federal Trade Commission last week brought many issues over the treaty to the fore but solved none of them. Participants in that meeting contended over how to address consumer contracts and the choice of courts for settling cross-border disputes.
Business groups do not want the treaty, as it currently would, to allow consumers to bring cases against online businesses in their home countries. Consumer groups favor that approach. The debate at the FTC was over a series of options outlined in a paper drafted for the meeting.
Where To From Here?
The Hague Convention will be the subject of a new round of negotiations from Feb. 26 to March 2 in Ottawa. The State Department's Jeffrey Kovar, who will lead the U.S. delegation in those talks, brings a sense of realism to the negotiation. The United States almost abandoned the negotiation last year but has a guarantee that only items of consensus will stay in the agreement. Formal talks are slated for June in The Hague.
The final negotiations have not been scheduled, however, because from the U.S. standpoint, "we don't see any point in scheduling a meeting unless there's a good possibility it will succeed. And right now, I don't think it will," Kovar said.
Kovar is encouraging as much public participation as possible in the development of the United States' first global jurisdiction treaty. "If we don't have a solid case of support in the [United States]," he said, "I don't think we'll get two-thirds of the Senate" required for ratification of any treaty. The informal negotiation in Ottawa will include as many as eight representatives from business, privacy and consumers' groups.
Then on March 8, the convention will be the topic of a session ominously titled, "Through a Glass Darkly: The Opaque Nature of International Rulemaking — The Hague Convention and the G-8." The session, to be led by James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, will be part of the Computers, Freedom and Privacy annual meeting in Boston from March 5-9.
But If We Could Just Talk About It
But much of the international emphasis is on addressing disputes before they reach the level of a full-fledged legal fight. Methods of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) for consumers who have exhausted company complaint procedures are actively being examined for application to online disputes, especially low-value ones.
In that regard, the European Commission has launched an out-of-court complaints network for financial services disputes within its 15-nation region. The online network, called FIN-NET, applies to both online and offline services but is targeted at building consumer confidence online, a topic of great concern in Europe. It draws together more than 35 different national systems for handling financial-services disputes and general consumer disputes.
European consumers' desire to do business online is likely to grow with the acceptance of the euro and ever-increasing comfort with the Internet. FIN-NET, ironically developed by a Finnish expert but named for its application to financial services, is intended to ease out-of-court redress by helping consumers use the ADR system in the supplier's country if the supplier does not belong to the complaint scheme in the consumer's country. All this is done while preserving the consumer's right to take the case to court if ADR does not resolve the matter.
Yet another effort to develop a central handling point for cross-border jurisdictional issues comes from the American Bar Association and the Global Cyberspace Jurisdiction Project. The ABA sent a letter to President Bush recently asking him to consider its report of last year calling for the establishment of a global commission on e-commerce jurisdiction issues.
Jurisdiction and other online legal issues, both domestic and international, also are addressed in a handy new booklet from the National Legal Center for the Public Interest. The booklet, "Contracting and Selling in Cyberspace: Guidelines for Businesses," was produced by three Internet attorneys at Washington-based Wiley, Rein and Fielding.
Now Catch The Latest Technology — On The Radio
In other news, international technology issues will be the topic of a new radio program being launched at a Thursday evening reception. The host of the inaugural broadcast will be Dr. Cheryl Shavers, the immediate former undersecretary of commerce for technology who joined James LeBlanc of S&H LeBlanc International in forming a new firm called Global Smarts.
WorldCom Vice President (and Internet originator) Vint Cerf will join Shavers. Other partipants in the broadcast will include: Rep. Tom Davis, R-VA; Dean Kamen, founder of DEKA Research and Development; David Sutcliffe, president and CEO of Sierra Wireless; and Catherine Mann, senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics.
The program on technology normally will air Fridays from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. on WWRC 570 AM.
India To Consider Communications Consolidation Bill
The government of India is taking comments until month's end on a bill to consolidate its Information Technology, Communications, and Information and Broadcasting ministries. According to the U.S.-India Business Council, the bill could become law this year.
If passed, the bill would create the Communications Commission of India, with responsibility for spectrum management, granting licenses and enforcing license conditions, determining tariff rates, and ensuring competition in the marketplace, USIBC said.
Europe Moving On Telecom Competitiveness
The European Union's telecommunications ministers meet Thursday in Lulea, Sweden, to discuss the finer points of harmonizing the various telecom regimes in the region. The meeting will be historic in that the employment ministers will join the telecom ministers for the first time to focus on the information-technology skills gap, according to a European Commission spokesman.
The focus will be on how to help Europe "compete with the United States for talent," the spokesman said. It also will be an acknowledgement that IT is the "main engine for growth" in the region, he said.
The event will lead into the European Union summit in Stockholm at the end of March. That summit will focus on economic issues and European competitiveness.
At the Lulea meeting, telecom ministers also will discuss the new framework aimed at liberalizing telecom markets. They will weigh the role of the commission versus the role of the individual EU member states "to ensure a level playing field for operators and consumers," the spokesman said. They also will address "significant market power" in an attempt to define it. Firms that fit the definition will be subject to special regulations.
Meanwhile, it has been reported that a European initiative on global interoperability of mobile positioning systems has stalled. The Location Interoperability Forum, launched by the wireless industry and established in September, has netted little to date, news reports say.
As a result, European mobile operators are on hold until they can get a signal as to what type of technology will be required depending on the regulatory directive that will be in place.
- by William New
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