Legislating for the Long Term?

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 12:52 10/03/98 +0000, Richard Clayton wrote:
>In article <3.0.5.32.19980309224539.00e5ba50@mail.netkonect.co.uk>,
>Nicholas Bohm <nbohm@ernest.net> writes

[snip]

>>What we need are the small, quick legislative tweaks that will help
>>electronic commerce get itself established, not elaborate underpinnings for
>>elaborate infrastructures that will become out of date before anyone has
>>decided who might build what on top (and meanwhile make the whole
>>enterprise seem far more difficult than it really is).
>
>I wonder if there is any consensus on what these "quick legislative
>tweaks" might be.

[snip]

>I wonder, about "legislative tweaks". Are there areas where we actually
>need the law changed ? or can we all build the systems and services we
>need in the current framework ? I think what I am asking would be 'Is
>there actually anything "broken" to "fix" ?'

[snip]

Put very shortly:

1	Some things which statute requires to be done "in writing" use a
definition of writing which does not extend to electronic materials; it
would be good to extend the definition.

2	It would be useful for legislation to lay to rest any doubts (probably
erroneous) about whether a digital signature is a signature.

3	Where a document is required to be signed in the presence of a witness
who then signs it, some adaptation for digital signatures might make this
easier to achieve than it probably is at the moment.

4	You cannot give away your handwritten signature, so don't need to be able
to revoke it.  As a result, there is no existing law that deals directly
with signature revocation, although common law principles would step in.
It might be useful to spell out a right to revoke a digital signature by
notice to those to whom the owner had supplied it.  (Here of course is the
relevance of evidence about what had been signed before notice of
revocation had effectively been given.)

I have written about this at greater length in an article published at
<htttp://techpolicy.lse.ac.uk/>.  As well as being useful in themselves,
the tweaks would also serve to provide a bit of welcome blessing for
digital transactions, PROVIDED ALWAYS the blessing is not mixed with TTPs
and private key deposit.

	Regards,

		Nicholas Bohm

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