[Ecommerce] Notes from the April 16, 2002 NGO E-Commerce Roundtable.

[James Love]

Notes from the April 16, 2002 NGO E-Commerce Roundtable.

1.       Hague Treaty

Most of what was said yesterday at the NGO Roundtable on the Hague Treaty
was for background, but it was also some surprising stuff.   The next round
is an important meeting in the Hague next week.  Jeff Kovar from State is
heading the US effort.  It was clear from the briefing that there are very
big differences between the US and other member countries over the future of
the treaty.  I can report that there are competing ideas, one is to shrink
the convention to something that looks at a smaller set of issues, such as
the cross border enforcement of contracts.   Another is the big
"comprehensive" treaty approach, that includes speech torts, IPR, etc.
These issues will be the focus of quite important negotiations next week.
There was quite a bit of discussion of the public policy issues related to
the enforcement of non-negotiated contracts, particuarly but not exclusively
in terms of e-commerce, as well as other issues, such as the use of
contracts to frustrate the first sale doctrine, or to limit linking of web
pages.  The American Library Association was quite focused on the importance
of the contract provisions to libraries, saying the Hague provisions were
worse than UCITA, which was highly controverial in the USA.  CPTech asked
that the Hague negotiators protect national discretion on issues such as the
first sale doctrine, or the control of anticompetitive practices, based upon
WTO/TRIPS provisions.    It was also pointed out that any treaty that
included speech torts would be a disaster.  The ALCU made a nice
presentation on use of defamation cases and bankruptcy provisions to control
dissents in China.   State was asked to be a better advocate of US values on
free speech in Hague discussions.

2.    ICANN.

Some NGOs encouraged DOC to consider a re-bid on its ICANN
contracts, to allow for competition. There is an issue of whether or not
there are consequences when non-profits fail to deliver as promised.   On
the "reform" front, several NGOs pushed for a decentralization of the DNSO
functions, perhaps through regional DNSO bodies, similar to what one sees in
the numbering area.   Some believe that 90 percent of ICANN's problems
relate to the DNSO, and that few of the DNSO policies need to be made at a
global level.

The DOC asked that most of its comments be off the record, but I can report
that the DOC was surprisingly concerned that consumer and civil society
concerns be addressed fairly by ICANN.  The Lynn proposal to have
governments nominate board members for the ICANN board apparently has zero
support within the GAC, raising again the issue of who chooses the ICANN
board members.  One person at the meeting reported that one ICANN board
member  told him that he would never agree to a procedure that would elect
people like Karl Auerbach and Andy Mueller-Maguhn.

There was some talk of the ITU proposal, and my guess is that there will be
more talk of this, unless some other intergovernmental organization comes up
with something else.   The DOC seemed to be saying "It's broke, let's fix
it," but the issue of "its broke, let's try something else" is not out of
the question, if the ICANN board cannot come up with something had addresses
some basic issues of accountability and responsiveness to consumer and civil
society interests.

3.    Spam.

The FTC outlined its thinking on building greater global cooperation on spam
control.   In one recent case the spam came from 60 countries.   At this
point, the FTC is finally beginning to see that global efforts are
important, but hasn't really done much so far.  (contrast this with global
efforts on IPR enforcement).  The EU is surprisingly reticent to have global
talks on spam, perhaps (acccording to some non-FTC particiants), feeling a
bit burned by the US on its privacy efforts,  where the US bashed the EU for
being too regulatory.

4.    Media Concentration.

The FTC is moving toward accepting more and more monopoly within technologie
s (cable, cooper wire telephone infrastructure and satellite), as long as
there is some competititon between platforms.

--------------------
James Love, mailto:james.love@cptech.org, http://www.cptech.org
voice +1.202.387.8030, mobile +1.202.361.3040, fax +1.202.234.5176

--------------------
James Love, mailto:james.love@cptech.org, http://www.cptech.org
voice +1.202.387.8030, mobile +1.202.361.3040, fax +1.202.234.5176