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Twinkle For E-Commerce Deal Dulls
by William New
An international convention on resolving cross-border e-commerce disputes was a twinkle in the eye of the United States and a few other countries back in 1992. After 10 years of discussions with the leading economies of the world, the twinkle has dulled for the United States.
The initiative formalized into a draft treaty in 1999, with an update in 2001. But differences between national laws, such as those of European nations, Japan and the United States, have been "impossible to harmonize," according to a U.S. government official. Progressive meetings have pared away the most intractable sections, such as business-to-consumer contract disputes.
In April 2002, at an impasse, the governments pursuing a treaty designated a small team of experts to focus on a few areas that could form the basis of a convention. That group will hold its third meeting on March 25-28 in The Hague, Netherlands.
Complicating matters lately has been increased concern by U.S. non-governmental organizations and businesses that the treaty will cover non-negotiated contracts, those automatically included upon purchases. The particular concern involves the packaged contracts for software downloaded from the Internet (click wrap) or over the counter (shrink wrap), as well as contracts unwittingly made by simply entering a Web site (browse wrap).
Internet users said the measures to reinforce such contracts make it more difficult to find exceptions, while software companies want the contracts to stick. With the debate raging within nations, government officials negotiating internationally must straddle the different views. "If you fall off that balance beam, you run into problems," the U.S. official said.
A tough debate has been ongoing in the team of experts over whether to allow parties to contracts to abandon the deal. Some negotiators think the stated terms should be absolute. Others see different options for exceptions. Some see the best solution as allowing courts in the countries of the complaining company to decide, while others think that might lead to unfair decisions.
One negotiator said it might not be necessary to resolve the question of online disputes internationally if national laws are given validity. Still others have suggested an exception for "manifestly unjust" or unreasonable contracts.
While the debate over what courts have jurisdiction in disputes continues, some people are trying to put the focus on the enforcement of judgments, the other goal of the proposed convention. Enforcement has to be imposed by the courts in the countries of offending companies, which can be so problematic that some companies abandon challenges to other companies.
FCC Stops U.S. Telecom Payments To Philippines
The FCC on Monday granted an emergency petition and ordered U.S. telephone carriers to stop all payments to foreign carriers in the Philippines for completing their calls, AT&T said.
The action is the result of the inability of U.S. carriers such as AT&T to connect calls from the United States directly to the Philippines because the U.S. carriers have refused to accept demands for an increase of up to 50 percent in connection fees since Feb. 1.
Len Cali, AT&T's vice president and director of federal government affairs, applauded the action in a statement. "Those carriers, acting together with the dominant carrier, Philippines Long Distance Telephone Company, took this action to force U.S. carriers to pay even higher charges for delivering traffic to the Philippines," Cali said.
He added that existing rates already were twice those for many other countries in the region and double the reciprocal rate for delivering calls from the Philippines to the United States.
U.S. Trade Office Names Key Officials
U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Zoellick on Tuesday made several key senior appointments, forming a team that appears to more strongly reflect national security and diplomatic interests.
John Veroneau will become general counsel on April 1, moving from his job as assistant USTR for congressional affairs and succeeding Peter Davidson, who left for the private sector. Matt Niemeyer will become the assistant USTR for congressional affairs, moving up from deputy in that office. And the new deputy assistant USTR for congressional affairs will be Lisa Coen, who recently arrived at USTR from the State Department.
James Mendenhall, the new assistant USTR for services, investment and intellectual property, takes his job effective immediately, replacing Joe Papovich, who retired last week after 21 years of service. Mendenhall was deputy general counsel. Papovich has accepted a job with the Recording Industry Association of America to try to bolster the organization's efforts to strengthen copyright laws around the world.
The assistant USTR for African affairs come April 1 will be Florizelle (Florie) Liser, who has been assistant USTR for industry, market access and telecommunications. Meredith Broadbent, currently a staffer on the House Ways and Means Committee, will fill Liser's position.
E. Ashley Wills, currently the U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka, will fill the new position of assistant USTR for South Asian affairs effective in June. And Ross Wilson, currently the U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, will fill another new post, senior negotiator for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) effective June 23. He will report directly to Deputy USTR Peter Allgeier, who is co-chair of the FTAA process along with his Brazilian counterpart.
Veroneau, Coen, Wills and Wilson come from backgrounds at the Defense or State departments.
Japan Approves Revised Privacy Bills
The government of Japan on Friday approved a set of bills aimed at protecting personal information, putting them on track for possible passage in the current session of the Diet, The Japan Times reports.
The bills would create protections to coincide with a new resident-numbering system to take effect in August. The national registry was introduced last August on a trial basis, but some municipalities have rejected it because of the absence of privacy legislation. The computerized system will assign an 11-digit identification code to every Japanese resident in an attempt to simplify administrative work.
The measures also would exempt all media from clauses on obtaining and using personal information and would strengthen wording on government suppression of the press.
The government dropped controversial provisions that forced it to pull the bills from the schedule in an extraordinary session of the Diet last year.
German Court Bans Ads On Cell Phones
The Berlin regional court has ruled that text-message advertisements on cellular phones violate mobile subscribers' rights and must be considered no different from unsolicited e-mail, or spam, europemedia.net reports.
A person who gave his mobile number to a Web site for another purpose filed the case after he soon began receiving regular text messages on his phone to buy fish and chips. He sued the fish-and-chips company and the Web-site owner who gave the number to the company.
U.S., Bangladesh Sign Science, Tech Agreement
The United States and Bangladesh have signed an agreement on scientific and technical cooperation. The agreement, signed in Dhaka, Bangladesh on March 1, establishes a legal framework to facilitate cooperation in science and technology between both the public and private sectors in the two nations.
Christina Rocca, the assistant secretary of State for South Asia, signed the agreement for the United States. Bangladesh is the first South Asian country to make such an agreement with the United States, and it is the 30th such deal worldwide.
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