[Ecommerce] Australia E-Commerce Best Practices Act

[Vergil Bushnell]

I am forwarding a post by Louise Sylvan, CEO of the Australian 
Consumers Association, regarding the Australian Electronic
Commerce - Best Practice Model for Business. This document -- 
"Building Consumer Sovereignty in E-Commerce: A Best Practice
Model for Business" may be found in html, .pdf or .rtf format at:

http://www.treasury.gov.au/publications/ConsumerAffairs/ElectronicCommerceAndConsumerProtection/BuildingConsumerSovereigntyInElectronicCommerce/index.asp.

Sincerely,


Vergil Bushnell
Consumer Project on Technology


 Subject: Australian E-Commerce Code
   Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 10:37:27 +1000
   From:  "Louise Sylvan" <LSYLVAN@CHOICE.COM.AU>

Apologies for Cross-Postings

I'm attaching the Australian Electronic Commerce - Best 
Practice Model for Business.  The Code was created by the 
Government's Expert Group in E-Commerce of which I'm a member.  
It's being launched by the Minister today (May 18th) at the 
Australian Consumers' Association.

This code has a lot of good stuff in it - in particular the 
Government has taken the position of opt-in spam (see 23)!  
Other good things are:  clause 44.6 - that "Businesses should
not try to contract out of their responsibiity for losses 
arising from the misuse or failure of authentication mechanisms."; 
clause 49.7 - that independent methods of dispute resolution should 
be "without prejudice to judicial redress."; cluse 53 - code 
administrations mechanisms... "should include an independent 
chair and equal numbers of industry and consumer/community
representatives"; and quite a lot of other parts of the code 
which require good disclosure, business identification, processes 
for concluding the contract and so on.

Things that we didn't or couldn't win were:  applicable law 
(clauses 50 and 51), but at least it doesn't say "country of 
origin" explicitly; and privacy (clause 39) - although the 
statements are strong, the proposed Australian privacy law 
which is in our Parliament at the moment is quite weak.

This is a self-regulatory code which also has inherent limitations.  
But a lot of self-regulation is closely monitored by the Government 
here - in fact, some of it comes close to co-regulation.  Judging 
by the way some industry groups are reacting to the opt-in spam 
position, it's obviously being taken very seriously.  The document 
is attached.

Louise Sylvan, CEO
Australian Consumers Association