Updating Contract Law for the Digital Age.

AuthorHOLLEYMAN, ROBERT

The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act will promote electronic commerce and protect consumers by providing predictability an new rights regarding dealings in the digital marketplace.

ELECTRONIC commerce over the Internet promises to become a way of life for consumers and businesses across the country. However, differing laws in each state pose a major barrier to further growth in e-commerce. The good news is that your state soon will be considering legislation to bring contract laws into the information age. The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) would serve as the roadmap for e-commerce by seeking to clarify the law that applies to digital information products and software. UCITA creates uniformity and facilitates agreements between customers and businesses, as well as providing new consumer protections.

Individuals and companies are using the Internet to conduct both business-to-consumer and business-to-business transactions. Today, e-commerce is large; tomorrow, it will be enormous. Forrester Research estimates that business-to-business e-commerce alone will rise to 1.3 trillion dollars by 2003. On-line retail business is projected to grow to $80,000,000,000 by 2002. What's behind the numbers? What is going on?

* Amazon.com revolutionized book sales by lowering costs and encouraging an interactive and participatory relationship between the parties. Consumers can log on to its web page and not only find book reviews and links to related materials and other works by authors, they can interact with the company by writing and posting their own reviews as well.

* On-line investing with e*trade, Schwab, datek, and others is predicted to grow from 3,000,000 users to more than 14,000,000 by 2002. According to one estimate, in August, 1999, there were 5,100,000 online investors with 11,200,000 accounts at 140 web brokers. By the end of 1999, 3,500,000 more on-line accounts were to be established.

* Dell Computers' on-line sales more than doubled in 1998 and currently account for an average of $18,000,000 a day and constitute 30% of the company's revenues. (Dell expects this percentage to increase to 50% in 2000.)

* Travelocity.com had gross sales of more than $301,000,000 by July, 1999, with more than 7,000,000 members.

According to one study, more than 20,000,000 PCs were used for e-commerce purchases in 1999, up from 11,600,000 a year earlier. Almost half of households are buying on-line.

Ninety-eight percent of Fortune 500 companies have an Internet presence, and on-line business-to-business transaction volume...

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