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List:       cryptography
Subject:    ABA Call for Participation- Electronic Commerce Projects
From:       Robert Hettinga <rah () shipwright ! com>
Date:       1998-11-17 14:22:39
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X-Sender: effross@mailhost.wcl.american.edu
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 08:34:01 -0500
To: rah@philodox.com
From: effross@wcl.american.edu (Effross Walter)
Subject: ABA Call for Participation- Electronic Commerce Projects
Mime-Version: 1.0


[This message is also available at
http://www.abanet.org/buslaw/cyber/workgroup.html
Apologies for cross-postings.]

        The American Bar Association's Subcommittee on Electronic
Commerce invites lawyers, law professors, and law students to participate
in its existing projects (described below) and to suggest new issues for its
Working Groups to address.  The next meeting will be held in Atlanta,
Georgia on Friday-Saturday, January 15-16, 1999.
        Because much of the Subcommittee's activity is conducted
"virtually"— through e-mail,  Web sites, and teleconference calls—
active contribution does not require regular attendance at ABA meetings.
In short, the Subcommittee offers the opportunity to become involved, to
the degree that you wish to contribute and without necessarily leaving
your office, in shaping the most complex and rapidly-developing areas of
today's commercial law.
        All members of the Subcommittee must be members of the American
Bar Association, its Business Law Section, and the Section's Committee
on Cyberspace Law.  For information on joining (reduced rates are
available for government lawyers and for law students), call (312)
988-5522, e-mail abasvcctr@abanet.org, or visit: <http://www.abanet.org/
members/home.html>. The home page of the Committee on Cyberspace Law is:
<http://www.abanet.org/buslaw/cyber/home.html>
        Walter Effross, Subcommittee Chair
        Associate Professor, Washington College of Law
        American University
        effross@wcl.american.edu   (202) 274-4210

Working Group on Consumer Protection [new]
      At its first meeting, the Working Group intends to examine the
current projects of the Committee as well as relevant activities of
other organizations, in order to determine the issues on which the
Working Group should focus its attention.  The Working Group will assess
the expertise of its members, the projects that will have the greatest
impact upon consumers and the ways in which the Working Group may most
effectively proceed.
      Among the projects the Working Group will consider are developing
a Model Privacy Policy for Web sites and conducting a review of ongoing
projects to determine whether they take consumer needs into account.
Examples of projects that may be considered are the Model Law on Money
Transmitters and EFT, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, and the
Model Home Banking Agreement.
                Chairs: Professor Jean Braucher,

				braucher@nt.law.arizona.edu
                        Professor Mark Budnitz,
				lawmeb@panther.gsu.edu


Working Group on Electronic Commercial Practices
        The Working Group will be establishing on a special page of the
ABA's Web site, and ultimately publishing,  a collection of contract
clauses that are designed to address issues that span a wide variety of
electronic commerce contracts. These clauses will be grouped by topic;
within each topic, the relative advantages and disadvantages of
alternative provisions will be evaluated.
        The initial set of topics includes: (1) provisions for
electronic signature of contracts themselves and for documents to be
executed within the scope of the contract; (2) provisions concerning the
identification of the capacity in which the "electronic signer" executes
a document, for purposes of binding the signer personally and/or the
signer's principal; (3) provisions for the "electronic execution" of an
agreement in counterparts (for example, by each recipient's electronic
signature and return of one electronic copy); (4) provisions for notice
by electronic mail; (5) the scope and effect of "entire agreement"
provisions in the context of electronic mail or Web pages; and (6)
provisions that allow modification only by the electronic equivalent of
"a written instrument signed by each of the parties
hereto."
            Chairs: Professor Christina Kunz,
     		           ckunz@wmitchell.edu
                    Professor Jane Kaufman Winn,

			    jwinn@mail.smu.edu

Working Group on Electronic Evidence
        The Working Group on Electronic Evidence will be initiating a
project to create an ABA publication on Electronic Business Records as
Evidence in Commercial Litigation.  The publication will include
checklists,forms, and recommendations for businesses on generating,
storing, purging, and retrieving electronic records such as e-mail;
framing effective discovery requests for electronic business records,
and responding accurately to such requests; establishing or disputing
the admissibility of electronic business records; and maintaining the
attorney-client privilege with respect to electronic business records.
                Chairs: Rae Cogar,
                        rncogar@das-inc.com
                        Professor Paul Rice,
                        price@wcl.american.edu

Electronic Agents Project [new] of the Working Group on Electronic
Contracting Practices
        The Electronic Agents Project will explore the legal
ramifications of the use of existing and proposed "electronic agents"
for business purposes, including considerations of commercial, agency,
intellectual property and tort law.
        In particular, the Electronic Agents Project will: (1) evaluate
evolving statutory provisions dealing with electronic agents, notably
the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Law's draft
proposed Article 2B of the Uniform Commercial Code and the draft Uniform
Electronic Transactions Act;  (2) survey and contribute to the
developing legal literature on electronic agents; and (3) develop
guidelines and recommendations for the commercial deployment and
operation of electronic agents. Where appropriate, the Electronic Agents
Project will encourage at its meetings presentations from members of the
software development community and its counsel.
                Chairs: Dan Greenwood, dan.greenwood@state.ma.us
                          John Muller, jmuller@brobeck.com

Working Group on the Transferability of Electronic Assets
        This Working Group, which is a joint project of the Cyberspace
Law Committee and the Science and Technology Section's Electronic
Commercial Payments Committee, will examine electronic commerce systems
that permit transfers of ownership of commercial assets, including
systems that use electronic records to represent ownership of commercial
assets and electronic registry systems.
        The Working Group is collecting descriptions of emerging
business practices and law in such areas as electronic bills of lading,
electronic chattel paper, electronic negotiable warehouse receipts,
electronic checks and electronic drafts, as well as descriptions of more
established electronic commerce systems such as funds transfers and
securities entitlements.  These business practices and possible legal
strategies for dealing with them will be analyzed and compared in the
context of reaching conclusions about the feasibility and desirability
of recognizing transferrable electronic assets in the Uniform Electronic
Transactions Act and other statutes.
        The Working Group will prepare a memo for the use of the Uniform
Electronic Transactions Act drafting committee in deliberations
scheduled for its February 1999 meeting of the "electronic transferrable
records" provision now in the draft.  After the UETA memo is completed,
the working group will begin work on a report that we hope will be
completed in time for the 1999 ABA Annual Meeting in Atlanta.
        This Working Group will also be involved in completing and
elaborating on the outline (posted at
http://www.abanet.org/scitech/ec/ecp/electneg.html) of legal issues in
electronic negotiability.
        Chairs: Professor Jane Kaufman Winn, jwinn@mail.smu.edu
                Professor Paul Shupack, shupack@ymail.yu.edu

--- end forwarded text


-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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