law of e-commerce

The intention of this essay is to examine the following statement: “The regulation of electronic commerce is not an issue for National or even European legislators. The issues are global and they must be regulated at that level. This can only be achieved by self regulation.”

In order to discuss the regulatory issues of e-commerce clearly, I would like to explain the nature of electronic commerce first. In my opinion, “electronic commerce” is used to refer to commercial transactions using the internet and other web enabled technologies, including WAP, other mobile telephony systems, and interactive digital television. E-commerce is a vibrant and rapidly expanding area of business, initially created in the US but increasingly extends to the whole world.

These new forms of business transactions provide enterprises, particularly SMEs (small and medium enterprise), the opportunity to do business with anyone, anywhere and at any time. Electronic transactions may be completed a...