To:
Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <brunner@nic-naa.net>
Cc:
ietf-provreg@cafax.se, effross@WCL.AMERICAN.EDU, jbc@lainet.com
From:
James Bryce Clark <jbc@lawyer.com>
Date:
Thu, 01 Mar 2001 17:55:41 -0800
In-Reply-To:
<200103011740.f21Hek813997@nic-naa.net>
Sender:
owner-ietf-provreg@cafax.se
Subject:
Re: FWD: clc-e-contract
At 09:40 AM 3/1/2001 , Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine wrote:
>
>This from the Cyberspace Law Committee - Electronic Contracting list.
>In a nutshell (tm), registrANT is auto-billed for renewal by registRAR.
>See also:
>http://www.dnso.org/wgroups/wg-review/Arc02/msg01003.html
>We've discussed some aspects of temporal scope of registrations, anyone
>have any thoughts on persistence and renewal?
>
>Eric
Hello Eric and list,
I'm the author of the e-mail Eric forwarded. Not as a coincidence, I am
also a chair of an electronic commerce subcommittee of the American Bar
Association's business law group.
As long as you're on the topic, I thought I would pass along some
additional background.
* The e-mail was sent to my committee (which is meeting in
Philadelphia in a few weeks) as the starting point for further discussions
of the manner in which contracts are formed over the Internet.
* In the US we have recently enacted federal statutes (and our
states are enacting additional rules) that define the proper scope of uses
of electronic affirmations such as a "Click Here" button, or PKI signature,
or et cetera. Ideally these rules will make it clear for whom, and for
how long, and with what kind of warnings, an electronic affirmation is
given the same legal enforceability as a signature. (Of course, a number
of other jurisdictions, and UNCITRAL for the
UN, also have recently developed rules. Not all of them are alike.)
* In practice, the exact meaning and application of these rules
may not always be clear. I have received several reply messages from
lawyer colleagues, who have varying ideas on how the law would apply in the
case I described.
* In fact, in the specific case of my actual domain name, after an
exchange of Internet messages, I simply called the registrar's customer
support line on the day before the renewal deadline. They responded
promptly, and apparently effectively, to the telephone request to turn off
the described "safe-renew" feature.
* If anyone on this list cares to hear it, I would be happy to
share with you the results of our informal group analysis of the matter,
once we have met in late March. Just drop me an e-mail.
Best regards
Jamie Clark