Choice of Law: E-Commerce and Copyright Disputes Note on International E-Commerce Disputes If a consumer purchases goods online,what law should apply to the transaction,and which jurisdiction will adjudicate any subsequent dispute?After all, in many cases, the consumer will not know whether the web site she has just accessed is "located" on a server just down the street or on a different continent (and indeed a single site may have elements that reside on multiple server in multiple locations). If a French consumer accesses a "Swedish" web site, has she somehow "entered" Sweden for purposes of jurisdiction and choice of law? Moreover, the possibility that the site itself might require the consumer to agree to contractual terms that include choice of law and forum selection clauses may not fully resolve the dilemma. Some countries may determine that such "clickstream" agreements are enforceable while others might view them as not being true bargains because the bargaining power among the participants might be unequal. Or countries might determine that consumer protection issues implicate public values that cannot simply be contracted away by parties to a transaction. If so, which jurisdiction's consumer protection law should apply? The European Union, in an attempt to address these challenges, adopted a directive in early summer 2000, enshrining the "country of origin" principle for such sales. Under the directive, the law of the country of the merchant or service provider applies in the event of a dispute. See Council Directive 2000/31/EC, 2000 O.J (L 178) 1. Several months later, however, the European Commission indicated that it might adopt the socalled RomeⅡRegulation, which would reverse the directive and make the laws of the consumer's country apply in cross-border e-commerce disputes, absent contractual provisions to the contrary. See Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on E-commerce and Financial Services, COM(01)-66final. Since then, under heavy pressure from business interests, the EU has backed off the idea of enacting RomeⅡ. These flip-flops demonstrate how contentious the question of jurisdiction over e-commerce activities has become. Can you identify the strengths and weaknesses of both EU approaches? Are there any other ways one might try to resolve the choice-of-law dilemma with regard to e-commerce transaction? Note on International Copyright Disputes In the online environment, works such as videos, recordings of musical performances, and texts can be posted anywhere in the world, retrieved from databases in foreign countries, or made available by online service providers to subscribers located throughout the globe. Our system of international copyright protection, however, historically has been based on the application of national copyright laws with strictly territorial effects and on the application of choice of law rules to determine which country's copyright laws would apply Although such a network of national codes may have sufficed in an era when the distribution or performance of works occurred within easily identifiable discrete geographic boundaries, "[i]nstant and simultaneous worldwide access to copyrighted works over digital networks... fundamentally challenges territorial notion in copyright," and complicates traditional choice of law doctrine because it is often difficult to determine where particular acts have occurred in order to determine which copyright law to apply. ***Andreas P. Reindl, choosing Law in Cyberspace: Copyright Conflicts on Global Networks, 19 MICH. J . INT'L L. 799, 800-01(1998) We will explore some of the substantive questions of copyright protections for online activities in Chapter Four. For now, just focus on the problem of determining which country's law should apply to any particular online copyright dispute. Or does the new context require a new transnational legal regime? 마지막문단 위에 ***표시는 그 바로윗문단 인용구같아요 번역기 돌려봤는데 무슨말인지 모르겠어요... A4용지 한페이지정도 분량인데......넘 길다고 패스하지 마시구요 도와주세요