<nettime> Industry Standard on the Hague treaty

["nettime's_roving_reporter" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

  [via <tbyfield@panix.com>; see jamie love's comments on this article at
  <http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/random-bits/2001-June/000595.html>.]

<http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,27176,00.html>

THE INDUSTRY STANDARD MAGAZINE
Your Court or Mine?
By Boris Grondahl 
Berlin Bureau Chief
Issue Date: Jun 25 2001

An international conference aims to make the world legally safe for
e-commerce.

BERLIN - International law was murky even before the Internet made a
mockery of national borders.

So pity the brain trust of diplomats holed up in The Hague, Netherlands,
for the past two weeks. Their mission: Work on a new treaty to determine
how private parties file civil lawsuits when the plaintiff and defendant
are in different countries.

An agreement, the negotiators hope, will begin to lay the legal ground
rules for the next generation of e-commerce services.

Under the current tangled web of international law, companies and
individuals can win a suit in one country but never be sure that the
decision will be enforced in the jurisdiction of the defendant.

The treaty hopes to set guidelines as to which national court can rule on
a specific case. It would then require other countries to enforce those
rulings.

According to a draft of the treaty, when a U.S. company does a deal with a
Swiss company, both sides can agree to be governed by either the U.S. or
Swiss courts - or even a third country. In the case of consumers and
employees, they will be able to file suit in their home countries.

Opponents of the current draft - led by the U.S. delegation in The Hague -
argue that this leaves companies open to suits from all over the world and
stifles their incentive to expand e-commerce. Consumer advocates counter
that distrust of the Net will not diminish if consumers have only one
option for airing their grievances: bringing a suit in a foreign country.

Sound complicated? It's nothing compared with the fight over intellectual
property and free speech.

U.S. companies and civil rights activists are terrified that foreign legal
judgments will trample on the First Amendment.

Last November, a French court found U.S. Internet company Yahoo liable for
selling Nazi memorabilia, outlawed in France, to French citizens through
its U.S.-based Web site.

At the same time, the rest of the world recoils at what it sees as
excessive U.S. litigation against trademark and patent infringement.

So far, no one seems keen on compromise. But if the hurdles to an
international agreement seem too high, the organizers of The Hague confab
can fall back on a follow-up conference scheduled for late this year or
early next. They'll need to: As chief U.S. negotiator Jeffrey Kovar
describes it, the treaty "is not close to being ratifiable." At least
there's something all the participants agree on.



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