--- begin forwarded text X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 08:34:01 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (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 [EMAIL PROTECTED], 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (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, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Professor Mark Budnitz, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Professor Jane Kaufman Winn, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Professor Paul Rice, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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, [EMAIL PROTECTED] John Muller, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Professor Paul Shupack, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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'
