Many legal issues are related to e-commerce. When buyers and sellers do not know each other and cannot even see each other (they may even be in different countries), there is a chance of fraud and other crimes over the internet. During the first few years of EC, the public witnessed many of these, ranging from the creation of a virtual bank that disappeared along with the investors' deposits, to manipulation of stock prices on the Internet. Unfortunately, fraud on the Internet is increasing.
Challenges of Internet for Free Speech
Some of the major legal issues included in ecommerce include:
1) E-filings in court,
2) Evidence,
3) Jurisdiction,
4) Liability,
5) Defamation,
6) Identity fraud,
7) Computer crime,
8) Digital signature,
9) Regulation of consumer databases,
10) Encryption policies,
11) Time and place,
12) Location of files and data,
13) Electronic contracts,
14) E-communications privacy,
15) IPOS online,
16) Antitrust,
17) Taxation,
18) Money laundering,
19) Corporate reporting,
20) Free speech, and
21) Internet Indecency
22) Censorship.
23) Protection against fraud
Some of them are described briefly below.
Free Speech
The right to free speech is protected in the United States, in the European Union, and in other countries. At the same time, in interpreting this right, the needs of society must be balanced against the potential for the abuse of this right. No society recognises the absolute rights of free speech - words that stimulate violence, e.g., are clearly not protected in the constitutions of most nations.
On the internet, people enjoy their right to free speech as never before - they enter chat rooms, put-up postings on bulletin boards, and offer their opinions on everything from books to sex. The internet has created an unprecedented forum for ideas and expression, and, interestingly, it has offered individuals an equally unprecedented opportunity for anonymous participation in this forum. In doing so, the internet poses still another set of regulatory challenges. What constitutes harmful expression on the internet? Who should determine what constitutes harmful expression? How far should regulation of expression extend in this new realm?
The bulk of the legislation on this issue was drafted in the late 1990s in response to increased public awareness of and anger about the issue.
Some of the more notable legislative acts include the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 (CPPA), the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA), the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (COPA), and the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2001 (CIPA). All were challenged almost immediately after being signed into law, mostly because of their broad definitions of what constitutes obscene and harmful material, as well as the threat they posed to websites' free-speech rights.
Lesser means of regulating content have fared no better. Web filters installed on school computers to keep students from visiting inappropriate sites, e.g., have come under fire from free-speech advocates and library associations.
The effect of free speech on internet businesses remains to be seen. The intentions of those who seek to prevent or to punish harmful expression – either "hate speech" or pornography - may be laudable, but critics note that, once put into place, regulations that touch upon these issues have a tendency to expand to cover more ambiguous issues. For example, the U.S. federal prohibition against child pornography was expanded to cover "virtual pornography" - images that appear to depict minors but are in fact computer generated.
Challenges of Internet for Free Speech
The two major challenges the internet has brought to regulation are:
1) Speed: The speed with which new technology is introduced and the rapid pace at which new technology is introduced has an effect on issues such as privacy and intellectual
2) Lack of Physical Borders: The internet's lack of physical borders has an effect on issues such as taxation and gambling. property;
Both have implications for free speech.
Internet Indecency
Internet Indecency deals with the necessity to suppress pornography on the Internet, including both child and adult pornography.
The main question is whether the states should co-operate in enforcing their moral standards, taking into account also the fact that their standards of indecency do differ.
This begins with giving an example of difficulties arising from suppressing the crime of pornography on the Internet. It gives a general overview of the state of international 1law in this area. It is stressed that the lack of the international cooperation can mean for the states a diminishing of their sovereignty to determine their public policy. Pornography also threatens traditional cultures and their concept of decency. Since there is an international obligation to protect world cultures and cultural diversity, the reason to suppress pornography, particularly adult pornography, on the Internet is not bound to proving any individual harm which adult pornography may cause.
The reasons to ban pornography are weighed against the reasons not to ban. It is argued that there are sufficient reasons to ban adult pornography internationally as well as child pornography. The main difficulty to introduce an effective international regulation of the ban is the lack of the international standard for obscenity.
Censorship
The censorship of internet content and communications restricts electronic commerce because it prevents certain types of products and services from being sold or advertised. Further, it reduces the interest level of many potential participants in online activities. If large numbers of people in a country are not interested in being online, businesses that use the internet as an information and product delivery channel will not develop in those countries.
Who will decide what should and what should not appear on the web? Since the web is not being controlled and run by a single government or a single organisation, it is not feasible to censor offensive information.
There are two types of information available on the web
1) Public
2) Private
Public information could be censored for public policy reasons; however. information addressed to an individual should not be subject to censorship.
Another important censorship problem occurs when items that are acceptable to the majority of society are offensive to a minority group, such as a political, religious, or cultural minority.
Some countries have tried to restrict or constrain web access to their citizens. In the United States, citizens are against government intervention. Some governments forbid direct access to the web. The governments of Burma and Singapore have attempted to censor the information provided on the web. They feel threatened by the information their citizens could receive on the web. Several countries only allow individuals who work for multinational corporations to have direct access to the web. Some Asian countries have been successful at limiting their citizen's access to the web. The web contains racism, pornography, and extreme political views that some countries believe may destabilise their national security.
Although U.S. citizens do not want the government to intervene with the web, many parents are concerned about what their children are exposed to while using the web. How can parents control their children's access to the web? Parents should be alerted to the potential hazards of the information superhighway. Several guidelines for the web use have been published to inform parents of the benefits as well as the hazards of the new technology. Software programs listed below prevent children's access to certain information:
1) Cyber Patrol
2) CyberSitter
3) CyberSnoop
4) Net Shepherd
5) NetNanny
6) NetRated
7) Safe Surf
8) SurfWatch
Parents should counsel and teach their children to be aware of the potential danger and to use good judgement while using the web. Pornography is not the only concern here; violence and adult language on the web pose still another se- rious problem. Specific web browsers are entering the market that can further improve the children's security. For example, some of these web browsers accept e-mail only from another site that is using the same web browser. This ensures that only a child can send e-mail to another child.
Another possibility would be to create different levels of user access similar to the current rating of motion pictures. Children would be prevented from accessing controversial or pornographic information. A method for the implementation of this system would be through the password or biometrics such as retinas of the eyes, hand geometry, or fingerprints.
Taxation
EC taxation is another controversial issue. This issue is extremely important because it is related to global EC, as well as to fairness in competition when EC competes with offline marketing channels, which require the collection of taxes.
It also is an important issue due to the large volume of online trade that is forecast for the next decade. EC transactions are multiplying at an exponential rate. Cities, states, and countries all want a piece of the pie.
Taxation is not simply a matter of efficient economic management and functional governance, but serves to define, enable, and constrain the historical meaning of the state and the possibility of society. However, the emergence of international and possibly global dimensions of taxation is a far more recent phenomenon. 'As this implies, the institutional practices of taxation have been subject to continuous if not constant re-negotiation throughout their history in response to the changing forms and functions of the societies they help to constitute'.
Encryption Policies
Encryption is the process of transforming information (referred to as plaintext) using an algorithm (called cipher) to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information (in cryptography, referred to as ciphertext).
All encrypted messages must contain some redundancy, that is, information not needed to understand the message. This redundancy is needed to prevent active intruders from sending garbage and tricking the receiver into decrypting the garbage and acting on the "plaintext".
Types of Encryption Policies
Encryption systems generally belong to two categories:
1) Symmetric / Secret Key Encryption: In symmetric algorithms, the encryption key and the decryption key are the same. These algorithms, also called secret-key algorithms, single-key algorithms, or one-key algorithms, require that the sender and the receiver agree on a key before they can communicate securely.
The security of a symmetric algorithm rests in the key; exposing the key means that anyone could encrypt and decrypt messages. As long as the communication needs to remain secret, the key must remain secret.
2) Asymmetric Encryption/Public Key Encryption: In Public Key Cryptography (asymmetric algorithms), each person gets a pair of keys, one called the public key and the other called the private key.
Each person's public key is published while the private key is kept secret. The need for the sender and receiver to share secret information is eliminated; all communications involve only public keys, and no private key is ever transmitted or shared. No longer is it necessary to trust some communications channel to be secure against eavesdropping or betrayal.
All of the security in these algorithms is based in the key (or keys); none is based in the details of the algorithm. This means that the algorithm can be published and analyzed.
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