PIU report and human rights: e-commerce Bill

[Alan Burkitt-Gray]

	-----Original Message-----
	From:	David Swarbrick [SMTP:david@swarb.demon.co.uk]
	Sent:	Wednesday, June 16, 1999 5:08 PM
	To:	ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk
	Subject:	Re: PIU report and human rights: e-commerce Bill

	In message <3.0.5.32.19990616102746.0093f4a0@mail.netkonect.co.uk>,
	Nicholas Bohm <nbohm@ernest.net> writes
	>At 05:14 PM 6/15/1999 +0100, Duncan Campbell wrote:
	>
	>
	>There are a few cases where the law requires paper between private
parties,
	>and would need legislation (and some administrative adaptations) to
accept
	>electronic documents.  Those I can think of are:
	>
	>Contracts dealing with interests in land
	...
	etc
	>
	>There are no doubt many requirements for official forms, returns,
etc, etc,
	>to be on paper, which also need adaptation.  There is a real job of
work
	>here and, as the Select Committee observed, the DTI hasn't buckled
down to it.
	David Swarbrick writes...

	A recent and live discussion has been about the practice of
Virgin.net.
	Their T&Cs suggest that they acquire the copyright in all materials
	transmitted through their systems. They do seem to seek to enforce
this
	condition! 

	
I'm only a journalist, but Virgin.net's now a free site and therefore the
user pays no money (or anything else) to Virgin for the use of web space.
Hence, I would have thought, there is no contract and Virgin could not
enforce acquisition of copyright in any case.
Or am I missing something?
Alan

-
ALAN BURKITT-GRAY, Editor, Government Computing
The independent magazine about information age public service,
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