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Electronic contracts are witnessing rapid growth, becoming a significant portion of both international and domestic trade. This is attributed to the ease and speed of their formation and execution, allowing individuals to access a wide range of options by simply pressing the keyboard of their internet-connected devices. This eliminates the need for physical movement and facilitates constant communication and interaction between the contract parties. Such digital transactions ensure complete freedom for negotiation and discussion of contract terms, akin to traditional face-to-face negotiations conducted in a physical contract assembly. This has led to an increased demand for products and services online, consequently expanding the consumer base in the realm of electronic commerce (Al Marzouki, 2019). The buyer holds a central role in the business process but is in a relatively weaker position compared to the merchant, who is considered the stronger party. Merchants can master the mechanisms of managing electronic business practices professionally on websites, while consumers may approach contracts with only basic familiarity, limited by the technologies available to them. Hence, there arises a need for consumer protection laws designed to shield individuals from deceptive and misleading policies and practices in unfair business transactions (Almehiri, 2015). Therefore, it is imperative to provide special protection for the buyer in electronic contracts. The idea of buyer protection has garnered significant interest in most civilizations worldwide, as it constitutes a right enjoyed by the consumer. This protection shields the consumer from fraud and deception that may be perpetrated by the seller. Consumer protection witnessed a substantial breakthrough in the twentieth century with the enactment of numerous laws supporting consumer rights. Additionally, both local and international entities have shown interest in educating consumers across various fields to ensure they are aware of their rights and responsibilities, preserving them within the appropriate legal framework (Abdul Samad, 2016). It is now evident that buyer protection is crucial in electronic contracting. This protection extends beyond the time of contract formation and execution; it is equally essential to safeguard the buyer from the moment they enter the online sphere to search for an e-commerce store to contract with until the contract's execution. The aspects of this protection manifest in the stage of electronic advertising on the store's website on one hand, on the other hand, ensuring consumer protection during the negotiation phase of the contract is a matter that must be carefully considered by the e-commerce store. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of contracts has seen transformation with advances in technology. The efficacy of contract law has been put to the test during this transition from paper-based traditional contracts to electronic contracts. A step forward in this changeover is the 'smart contract'. Although the term 'smart contract' has been in use for two decades, there is as yet no consensus on its meaning. For this paper, we refer to smart contracts as those based on blockchain technology, which generates a decentralised tamper-evident ledger shared within a network of entities. The paper is a critical analysis of the efficacy and adequacy of the Indian Contract Act, 1872, and the Information Technology Act, 2000, in the context of smart contracts. It traces how accommodative Indian law has been to electronic contracts and extends this analysis to smart contracts. It probes smart contracts in the context of the general principles of contract formation, viz., meeting of the minds, offer, acceptance, consideration, capacity, performance, and enforceability. The legal and regulatory aspects of cryptocurrencies, which are often used as consideration, are examined in the Indian context. The paper also elucidates upon the synchronisation of law and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adhesion contracts have a strong likelihood of being unconscionable. The laws and principles are further complicated by the introduction of electronic contracts, specifically electronic consumer contracts. The paper touches upon the duty to read doctrine in contracts and electronic contracts. While the doctrine of unconscionability has evolved it has been playing catch up with the demands of consumers. This paper compares the application of this doctrine in the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), and India. The paper also proposes recommendations for consumers and the development of laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision of the Constitutional Court Number 20/PUU-XIV/2016 creates legal uncertainty if it is applied in proving civil procedural law. This is due to the difference in the law of evidence between civil and criminal procedural law and considering that the validity of evidence in procedural law also affects the legality of making a document, especially relating to electronic documents. Based on this description, the researcher elaborates on several issues, namely regarding the legal certainty of electronic contracts in Indonesia and the legality of electronic contracts as evidence in the perspective of civil law. The results of the research are that the basis for legal certainty of electronic contracts in Indonesia is based on Article 5 of Law Number 11 of 2008 concerning Electronic Information and Transactions, reinforced by the Constitutional Court Decision Number 20/PUUXIV/ 2016, while the basis for the legality of electronic contracts used as evidence in the perspective of civil law is sourced from the Constitutional Court Decision Number 20/PUU-XIV/2016 and the rules regarding contracts in general as contained in the Civil Code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To work, go to school, shop and even to communicate with each other, Americans live by the terms of myriad tech company contracts. Indeed, any time someone presses the "1 agree" button that pops up on a website-the clicking of which is required to continue on-they have entered into such a contract. Rarely read by the consumer and often objectively one-sided in the company's favor, these contracts contain all the terms that will govern the consumer relationship to the company, including, among other things, how the company will control the use and sale of that consumer's personal data. Given the growing consumer discontent with these non-negotiated, digital contracts-the breadth of the data collection policies, the inadequate notice about important terms, and the apparent unequal enforcement ofwhat should be standard (equally applied) terms-it is surprising that there has been so little pushback on their enforceability. To be sure, there are calls for comprehensive privacy legislation that targets objectionable data collection terms. While such legislation is necessary and welcome, there may be an under-utilized ally for consumers already well-established in our legal system-the doctrine ofunconscionability. This Article argues that, correctly applied, unconscionability can serve as an effective support to privacy legislation and can protect consumers against egregious digital contracting practices. This Article jirst sets out the historical roots of the unconscionability doctrine, including discussion of two seminal cases-Williams v. Walker- Thomas Furniture Co. and A & M Produce Co . v . FMC Corp. This Article then highlights current contract concerns-such as privacy protections and discriminatory enforcement-and examines current digital contract problems concerning Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Uber and how unconscionability might apply to the benefit of consumers. To test if unconscionability is sufficiently robust to curb contractual excesses, this Article presents and analyzes a novel and unique dataset of over 7,000 unconscionability court decisions. Aspartofthe extensivedataanalysis, 814 court decisions on unconscionability claims were read, analyzed, and catalogued to determine the success and contours of the courts' decisions. Finally, this Article presents a possible legislative "upgrade" to the doctrine of unconscionability to refocus, where necessary, courts' deployment ofit in cases Of digital contracting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electronic marketplace poses novel issues for contract law. Contracts created through browsewrap, clickwrap, and shrinkwrap (contracts whose embedded terms are only available after purchase) poorly fit doctrines that emerged from face-to-face offer and acceptance, the mutual execution of a common set of documents, or the rituals of mass market transactions involving physical fine print. Not surprisingly, these contracts of the new electronic marketplace require doctrinal elaboration. Our Article asks not about the specific resolution of new doctrinal challenges, but about how the common law of contracts will be elaborated. Specifically, the Article begins with empirical observations about the domain of all electronic and shrinkwrap contract cases and makes four critical findings. First, we document two shifts: One arises from a steady decline in the number of cases adjudicated in state court relative to federal courts, which by 2015 adjudicate the vast majority of cases in this area. The other stems from a rise in class actions, which is intimately tied to the migration of cases to federal court. The result is that today the vast majority of cases dealing with electronicallytransmitted and "terms later" contracts are class actions brought in federal court. The increase in class actions is not surprising given the relatively small stakes of most transactions and the little incentive consequently created for individual consumer litigation. We hypothesize that the increased dominance of the federal forum is in part likely a reflection of the federalization of class action law under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA). Second, the consequence of the dominance of the federal forum is that the common law is being elaborated in federal court in suits arising under diversity jurisdiction. In turn, those federal courts are largely bereft of any state law moorings as they develop the common law of the electronic marketplace. Erie Railroad v. Tompkins notwithstanding, the common law is driven by federal court decisions, building incrementally on each other rather than state law. Third, the development of common law in federal court means that there is no apex court that can define conclusively the law of any jurisdiction. When state common law cases develop organically through the state court system, the natural progression from trial court to appellate review to final review in the state supreme court would yield a definition of the substantive law of any particular jurisdiction. When, however, the case law is being driven by federal courts anticipating what state common law should be, the same process of common law filtration does not reach conclusive resolution. Diversity jurisdiction allows federal courts to predict how they believe state common law would develop, but binds no state courts in the affected jurisdiction, and does not even bind federal courts in the same circuit putatively applying the law of another state. The law develops in fits and starts as doctrines assume persuasive influence as opposed to the command status that the ruling of a state high court would have. Rather than the law resolving hierarchically, we identify a "tournament effect" in which the law settles on one or a few influential decisions, regardless of the state lawthat the casemay have arisenunder. The tournamentwinner, usually a circuit courtopinion, establishes the new standard and is followed by subsequent courts, including state high courts. Finally, we conjecture that the use of contractual clauses compelling arbitration and forbidding claim aggregation may have affected the number of cases being adjudicated in court and, consequently, depressed the development of publicly available law in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The common law that applies to Internet contract formation could be said to exist in a penumbra—a grey area of partial illumination between darkness and light—where it may be possible to lose sight of established contract law principles. Internet contracts raise difficult issues relating to their formation that challenge traditional contract doctrine. Analysis of case law from the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland illustrates that the courts have not applied contract formation doctrine in a principled or consistent way. There is a tendency for decisions to be reached for policy reasons, for example, to facilitate the development of e-commerce, or to achieve a result that is considered fair, rather than on sound principles of contract law. There may also be some uncertainty arising from the relationship between statutory consumer protection rules and common law contract formation doctrine. The enforceability of Internet contracts in the common law courts remains unpredictable. This article argues that although Internet contracting may raise distinctive contract formation issues, it is possible for the judiciary to invoke the inherent flexibility of the common law, to take into account the specific characteristics of Internet contracts, while still adhering to established contract law doctrine and maintaining a principled approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As we see a ramping-up of online teacher professional learning and development (PLD) offerings, it is becoming increasingly imperative to consider the complexity and nuances of what constitutes effective online teacher PLD, and to be able to plan and evaluate it. There is a need for PLD to be 'genuinely effective', but while descriptions of effective teacher PLD abound, effective online teacher PLD is not as clearly articulated. We analyse characterisations of effective PLD and the extent to which they apply to online contexts. We argue that for online PLD to be genuinely effective—relevant, collaborative and future focused—attention must be paid to practice architectures that hold online PLD in place, to technological demands and to how evidence regarding PLD efficacy is generated and collected. To this end, we propose a heuristic framework for planning and evaluating online PLD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern information communication technologies, especially the Internet, have been extensively used in contracts. Yet laws which govern contractual relationships were passed at a time when Internet was unknown. Due to this fact, conventional contract laws empirically face significant challenges to address legal controversies arising from electronic contracts. In the same fashion, Ethiopian General Contract Law is unfit to accommodate legal controversies resulting from the occurrence of electronic contracts. The main legal challenges due to the development of electronic contracts are uncertainty regarding legal recognition of data messages, issues associated with consummation of consent, attribution of communications, input errors, time of contract formation, formality requirements, variation, notice of nonperformance, privity of contract, admissibility and parole evidence rule of electronic records. The above-underlined issues, which stem from the emergence of electronic contracts, are hardly addressed by our civil code. Therefore, this work is mainly meant to make a humble attempt to examine the appropriateness of the Ethiopian General Contract Law to accommodate technologically driven electronic contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding accountability in contract violations, e.g., whom is accountable for what, is a tedious, time-consuming, and costly task for human decision-making, especially when contractual responsibilities are delegated among parties. Intelligent software agents equipped with expert capabilities such as monitoring and diagnosis help save time and improve accuracy of diagnosis by formal reasoning upon electronic contracts. Such contracts are represented as commitment norms, a well studied artifact in multi-agent systems, which provide semantics for agent interactions. Due to the open and heterogeneous nature of multi-agent systems, commitments are often violated. When a commitment is violated, e.g., an exception occurs, agents need to collaborate to understand what went wrong and which agent is responsible. We propose Comodo : a framework for monitoring commitment delegations and detecting violations. We define a complete set of possible rational delegation schemes for commitments, identifying for each combination of delegations what critical situations may lead to an improper delegation and potentially to a commitment violation. Comodo provides a sound and complete distributed reasoning procedure that is able to find all improper delegations of a given commitment. We provide the complete implementation of Comodo using the Reactive Event Calculus, and present an e-commerce case study to demonstrate its workings. Due to its generic nature, we discuss the application of our approach to other distributed diagnosis problems in emergency healthcare, Internet of Things and smart environments, and security, privacy, and accountability in the context of socio-technical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Smart contracts" are decentralized agreements built in computer code and stored on a blockchain. Proponents imagine a future where commerce takes place exclusively using smart contracts, avoiding the high costs of contract drafting, judicial intervention, opportunistic behavior, and the inherent ambiguities of written language. These decentralized code-only contracts are part of a decades-long quest to eliminate supposed inefficiencies in traditional written agreements. Electronic data interchange (EDI), a contracting technology from the 1970s, was designed with the same goal and garnered similar fanfare. Commentators at the time imagined a revolution in the way firms transacted and a full shift away from anything resembling a paper contract. Ultimately EDI failed to achieve these goals--it empowered, rather than circumvented, human decisionmakers along with their "inefficient" way of forming agreements. In doing so, EDI successfully reduced some transaction costs while preserving efficient forms of contractual flexibility. Smart contracts are indeed more technologically sophisticated than EDI. Smart contract scripting languages offer a broader range of operations and greater scalability. Smart contracts are capable of seamlessly integrating with the operational and financial systems at the core of modern firms, whereas EDI transactions occurred in very early digital environments that required human intermediaries. Proponents of the smart contract revolution, therefore, do not describe the technology as a way to merely enhance human activity; they argue it can replace every stage of agreement formation and performance. From a purely technical standpoint, they might be right. However, shifting away from human-language contracts creates new inefficiencies. These stem from three features of smart contracts: automation, which requires that every agreement be formed from fully-defined terms; decentralization, which conditions performance on verification by third parties; and anonymity, which eliminates the use of commercial context to give meaning to agreement terms. As a result, it is extremely costly to form smart contracts in a volatile environment or whenever there's a level of uncertainty surrounding the agreement. On the other hand, semantic contracts are flexible. They enable parties to use performance standards, generally-defined contract terms, to create an enforceable agreement without requiring complete knowledge of what might happen in the future. Standards also allow parties to responsively incorporate commercial customs into their agreement, circumventing the need for explicit but redundant negotiation. And once their agreement is formed and executed, the parties are nonetheless free to dynamically shape their relationship through informal modifications or by selectively enforcing breaches. These two forms of flexibility--linguistic ambiguity, and enforcement discretion--create important efficiencies in the contracting process. By eliminating this flexibility, smart contracting will impose costs that are more severe and intractable than the ones it seeks to solve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diverse activities such as electronic exchange of goods and services, instant digital content delivery, electronic funds transfer, electronic stock exchange, electronic bill of lading, commercial projects, common engineering and design, sourcing, government purchase, direct marketing and post-sales services included in e-commerce field. Due to the increasing spread of the electronic world in all aspects, electronic contracts, in turn, was of great importance and made significant contributions in business contracts. The present study aims to investigate the concept, fundamentals and history of electronic contracts referring to UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce and Electronic Commerce Act (1996). The results indicate that in terms of the conclusion and obligations of the parties, contract in cyberspace in general is similar to the contract in the real world and in this respect, there is no major difference between these two contexts. Potential electronic contracts considered as written ones and Electronic signatures recognized as valid as the basis of the validity of the will in electronic trading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay highlight the importance for the signing parties, to include a clause of Intellectual Property on an it agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New websites and smartphone applications provide easy-click checking opportunities that can help consumers in many domains. However, this technology is not always used effectively. For example, many consumers skip checking Terms and Conditions links even when a quick evaluation of the terms can save them money, but they check their smartphone while driving even though this behavior is illegal and dangerous. Four laboratory experiments clarify the significance of one contributor to such contradictory deviations from effective checking. Studies 1, 2, and 3 show that, like basic decisions from experience, checking decisions reflect underweighting of rare events, which in turn is a sufficient condition for the coexistence of insufficient and too much checking. Insufficient checking emerges when most checking efforts impair performance even if checking is effective on average. Too much checking emerges when most checking clicks are rewarding even if checking is counterproductive on average. This pattern can be captured with a model that assumes reliance on small samples of past checking decision experiences. Study 4 shows that when the goal is to increase checking, interventions that increase the probability that checking leads to the best possible outcome can be far more effective than efforts to reduce the cost of checking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I hypothesize that different experiences with online contracting have led some consumers to see contracts--both online and offline--in distinctive ways. Experimenting on a large, nationally representative sample, this paper provides evidence of age-based and experience-based differences in views of consumer contract formation and breach. I show that younger subjects who have entered into more online contracts are likelier than older ones to think that contracts can be formed online, that digital contracts are legitimate while oral contracts are not, and that contract law is unforgiving of breach. I argue that such individual differences in views of contract formation and enforceability might lead firms to discriminate among consumers. There is some evidence that businesses are already using variance in views of contract to induce consumers to purchase goods they would not otherwise have. I conclude by suggesting how the law might respond to such behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the modern world, electronic communications play a significant role in national and international electronic transactions. This issue has forced all legal systems to face up to many emerging legal problems in the context of electronic communications, such as the legal status of electronic agents in contracting electronically. Regarding the legal validity of e-contracts made through interactive websites, the legal status of electronic agents which play an important role in this process is questionable to see whether they are akin to real agents in the physical world or they are only a mere tool of communication. The current article tries to analyse this question by criticising a number of theories and some others based on the technical nature of the Internet, the traditional legal rules and principles and the UNCITRAL regulations on e-commerce and also the statues of American, English and EU laws on e-commerce to develop Iranian legal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheric corrosion has vast consequences on the reliability of electronic connectors. This study determined the corrosion resistance of Ni/Ni–P plating metallurgy as a function of plating current density and plating thickness. Discrepancy was observed in the neutral salt spray (NSS) and mixed flowing gas (MFG) tests. Thicker Ni–P deposits displayed superior corrosion resistance in MFG tests while thinner Ni–P deposits performed better in NSS tests. This disparity was attributed to the intrinsic corrosion susceptibility of Ni–P against chlorine or sulfur assisted corrosion. Corrosion products were analysed for better understanding of the corrosion mechanism. NSS test produced green corrosion residues consisting of CuCl (nantokite) and CuCl 2 (OH) 3 (clinoatacamite) and brown residues consisting of Cu 2 O (cuprite). MFG test produced sulfides of copper (major) and nickel (minor). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the government's data-mining program relied heavily on information and technology that the government received from private companies, relatively little of the public outrage generated by Edward Snowden's revelations was directed at those private companies. We argue that the mystique of the Internet giants and the myth of contractual consent combine to mute criticisms that otherwise might be directed at the real data-mining masterminds. As a result, consumers are deemed to have consented to the use of their private information in ways that they would not agree to had they known the purposes to which their information would be put and the entities -- including the federal government -- with whom their information would be shared. We also call into question the distinction between governmental actors and private actors in this realm, as the Internet giants increasingly exploit contractual mechanisms to operate with quasi-governmental powers in their relations with consumers. As regulators and policymakers focus on how to better protect consumer data, we propose that solutions that rely upon consumer permission adopt a more exacting and limited concept of the consent required before private entities may collect or make use of consumer's information where such uses touch upon privacy interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses two main issues relating to Internet contracts in Iran: the adequacy of information and the rights of consumer to withdraw from such contracts under Iranian law, using Iran's Electronic Commerce Law (ECL) as a main point of reference. The ECL provisions stipulate that sellers to online consumers must provide pre and post contractual information. Provisions on post contractual information, which is the main concern of this paper, are covered by Articles 34 and 35 of the ECL and relate to after-sales services, guarantees, conditions to terminate the contract and withdrawal rights. The right to withdrawal by the consumer is a strong consumer right provided by Iranian legislation, and basic elements in this in the field of e-commerce and online transactions are laid down in Articles 37 and 38 of the ECL. The ECL is an important piece of legislation addressing issues of Internet contracts in Iran and thus merits critical discussion in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This topic assumes in the first instance, a generic review of contracts by electronic means insert in a globalized society, also, the study of recent legislative innovations, according to the progress of electronic digital technologies related to contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

C-O diagrams have been introduced as a means to have a more visual representation of normative texts and electronic contracts, where it is possible to represent the obligations, permissions and prohibitions of the different signatories, as well as the penalties resulting from non-fulfillment of their obligations and prohibitions. In such diagrams we are also able to represent absolute and relative timing constraints. In this paper we present a formal semantics for C-O diagrams based on timed automata extended with information regarding the satisfaction and violation of clauses in order to represent different deontic modalities. As a proof of concept, we apply our approach to two different case studies, where the method presented here has successfully identified problems in the specification. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the concept of electronic procurement and the electronic mass procurement. Topics discussed include the different types of electronic procurement, the importance of an electronic contracts formed in the course of e-commerce using electronic means, and the types of contracts such as business to business, business to consumer and consumer to consumer, and contracts by web technology.

Cloud computing has revolutionized computing technology and has opened new avenues for carrying out web based transactions. The Electronic Transactions Amendment Act 2011 of Australia has become one of the significant pieces of legislation that deals with the latest electronic transactions. This article seeks to explore the effect of electronic contracts in the light of these recent legal developments. A comparative analysis of the laws of Australia and United States of America (USA) is also carried out to gain additional insights [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The information age revolutionized the relationship between individuals and the internet. Today, children are the targets of online advertisements that lure them into accepting terms of service, thus entering into online agreements. While children may feel comfortable navigating websites, they are psychologically predisposed to be unsophisticated and impulsive actors online. Children lack the digital literacy to understand the implications of accepting website terms of service. Meanwhile, several states have misrepresentation-of-age statutes that prevent children from using the infancy doctrine to disaffirm online contracts because, in accepting the terms of service, children often represent that they are old enough to enter into the agreement. This Note argues that the heightened vulnerability of children online requires a reconsideration of the application of misrepresentation-of-age statutes to children's online contracts. To adequately balance the policy interests in protecting children against misrepresentation statutes' goal of preventing unknowing adults from being taken advantage of in the marketplace, this Note recommends that judges undertake a fact-specific, contextual inquiry of the online contract formation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, electronic contracting is at the forefront of how consumers, governments, and businesses conduct their affairs. Over the last several decades, electronic contracting has taken on new forms that have raised doubts about contract formation and enforceability. In order to facilitate commerce, the federal government and forty-nine states have responded by passing legislation that gives broad legal recognition to electronic signatures. Washington State is currently the only state that has not updated its electronic signature statute to comport with modern technology and ways of doing business. As a result, Washington's Electronic Authentication Act is likely preempted by federal law, and it presents an uncertain environment for electronic contracting. This Comment argues that Washington should join the overwhelming majority of states in adopting the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act to optimize its statutory framework for facilitating electronic contracting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internet has become a pervasive and established part of modern life and along with it legal frameworks for establishment and enforcement of consumer contracts have and continue to develop. Regulation and enforcement of internet contracts varies geographically. Generally, there are two primary legal approaches to internet contract enforcement: The United States model that relies on basic notice requirements to establish and enforce terms; and the European Union model that focuses on fundamental fairness in transactions between businesses and consumers. This paper examines common issues surrounding internet contracts and their application. The differences in the United States and European Union philosophy and approach to internet contracts are illustrated and compared. Finally, the potential for development of a unified legal framework for internet contracts is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The contract project was a European Commission project whose aim was to develop frameworks, components and tools to model, build, verify and monitor distributed electronic business systems based on electronic contracts. In this context, an electronic contract provides a specification of the expected behaviours of individual services, with the assumption that these services are often enacted by autonomous agents. Using the theoretical tools created by the project, in this paper we describe the complete life cycle of instantiating an electronic contracting system using the contract framework within the aerospace aftercare domain. Thus, we use a natural language description of parts of the types of contracts used in this domain to generate individual norms amenable to a computational representation, and how these norms are used to generate a concrete contract monitor. Moreover, we describe a concrete implementation of contract agents in the AgentSpeak(L) language and how these agents interact within a concrete instantiation of contract. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

With use of the Internet, a new form of contract has appeared: the electronic contract, which is concluded online. Most of these involve a relationship of two parties: a consumer who is in a relatively vulnerable position, and a business entity. There are numerous examples of such transactions: youngsters downloading music from a website and paying for it-as they would in a music store. Many physical goods can also be purchased online-e.g. even though they live in Europe, the authors of this article regularly purchase books from the US. There are numerous ways such transactions can take place: one of the most obvious ways is buying goods on Amazon or eBay, on the website of a company, or purchasing goods using e-mail communication. The article attempts to summarize the choice of law rules affecting electronic contracts in the US and in Europe-i.e. to give an overview of which country's or state's law would apply to a contract concluded online, what the limits are on such a transaction and which state's laws can protect us in case of a breach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Facebook and other social networking sites (SNSs) [1] “SNSs” will be used to abbreviate “social networking sites”. 1 are altering the way individuals communicate. These online environments allow users to keep up with friends, network with colleagues, and share their personal views and observations with others. Previous work describes typical social networking site users as young, extroverted, and technologically savvy. Little research exists, however, on the emerging role of news in the social network environment. With over 500 million global Facebook users, both print and television based media outlets are making concerted efforts to become part of this important and increasingly ubiquitous virtual world. The present study uses a sample of students, faculty, and staff from a large university to investigate the factors that are related to news use on Facebook. Findings indicate that while news use is still a minor component of overall social network site activity, certain key variables, such as gender and life satisfaction, have a significant impact on how Facebook is used for news-related purposes. Future implications for news in the social networking world are presented and discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Before signing electronic contracts, a rational agent should estimate the expected utilities of these contracts and calculate the violation risks related to them. In order to perform such pre-signing procedures, this agent has to be capable of computing a policy taking into account the norms and sanctions in the contracts. In relation to this, the contribution of this work is threefold. First, we present the Normative Markov Decision Process, an extension of the Markov Decision Process for explicitly representing norms. In order to illustrate the usage of our framework, we model an example in a simulated aerospace aftermarket. Second, we specify an algorithm for identifying the states of the process which characterize the violation of norms. Finally, we show how to compute policies with our framework and how to calculate the risk of violating the norms in the contracts by adopting a particular policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, we generalize the traditional on-line leasing problem to the case where the equipment is depreciable and the investor can always sell the used equipment for a positive price, which is an essential feature of many practical leasing problems. The traditional risk–reward model for the case with a certain forecast has been discussed for the on-line leasing of depreciable equipment. On the basis of this, an improved risk–reward model with a probability forecast is obtained here and presented as the main result. A relationship between the two risk–reward models, in which the latter includes the former as a special case, is proved. Numerical analysis shows that the competitive performance is significantly improved in the risk–reward models. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The electronics contracts in Cuba do not have a specific legislation to recognize his validity and regulate his requirement. These contracts haves to observe the rules in force and make whit the requirement for valid celebration. The forms of contract, like essentiality element of contract, isn't satisfied, because the date messages don't has been express recognize like a similar technique to produce equal effects that writing documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on online contracting and the legal and regulatory challenges faced due to internet commerce. It discusses seller exploitation, contract disclosure and dispute resolution clauses like forum selection clause. It further focuses on imposing of unnecessary costs and the empirical evidences from the study of End User License Agreements and its implications. It also discusses notion of assent and the current legal framework of online markets.

Abstract: The ease with which business can be transacted over the Internet raises various issues, not least among which are writing and signature requirements. While it has been established that an electronic record is a functional equivalent of writing, the position appears to be less clear with regard to electronic signatures. This paper examines the signature requirement as it applies to electronic contracts, in particular the form of electronic signature that can serve the functional equivalent of a handwritten signature for the purpose of the English Statute of Frauds 1677 and its various re-enactments. Reference will be made to legislation, the relevant UNCITRAL Model Laws and UN Conventions as well as to the substantial body of case law on paper contracts for analytical and comparative purposes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper we address dynamic assumption-based reasoning in open agent systems, where, unavoidably, agents have incomplete knowledge about their environment and about other agents. The interactions among agents in such systems are typically subject to norms, which stipulate what each agent is obliged, permitted, prohibited, empowered etc. to do, while it participates in the system. In such environments agents need to resort to assumptions, in order to establish what actions are appropriate to perform, and they need to do so dynamically, since the environment, the agents that exist in it, the information that is exchanged between them, and the normative relations between them change over time. In earlier work, we had proposed Default Theory construction to support dynamic assumption-based reasoning. We argued that in this way, agents could perform both assumption identification and employment dynamically, contrary to other approaches to assumption-based reasoning, which catered for either one or the other. A shortcoming of this early proposal of ours, though, is that Default Theory construction seems to require proof, which is notably computationally expensive. In this paper we present a computational technique that can be used for this construction in an incremental manner that does not depend on proof, and a prototype tool that we developed for experimentation. In a nutshell, depending on their current knowledge at any given time, agents can identify appropriate candidate assumptions in an ad hoc manner. When such choices need to be revised, agents can reconstruct their view of the possible world in which they find themselves, and establish their revised assumption requirements at run-time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Contract time is the maximum time allowed for completion of all work described in the contract documents. An accurate forecast of contract time for highway projects is crucial to contract administration by State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) because the predicted duration and associated cost form the basis for budgeting, planning, monitoring and even litigation purposes. This paper discusses a framework for determining contract time for highway projects in Oklahoma and presents a stand-alone computer software package which automates the entire procedure. The system developed in this study can be used as a basis for better project planning for DOTs. It can also provide documentation for a stronger defense in possible contract time disputes and will allow less experienced personnel to gain confidence as they learn how to consistently estimate reasonable and realistic contract time for highway projects. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this we seek to address the resemblance between Islamic rules and Western systems in terms of the criminal protection of IPRs. The significance of tackling this issue at this particular time is that there have been increasing calls in Western societies for the implementation of the rules of Share'a in their own Western territories. This article aims to situate this argument within the course of the criminal protection of IPRs, so as to prove that IPRs are one aspect of Share'a which does not conflict with the Western principles of protection. The main theme in this article is to establish that criminal protection of IPRs shall not result in severe physical punishments, but rather, would generate adequate protection to owners of intellectual creations. It shall be argued that intellectual theft could not be considered as a conventional theft which could result in the amputation of hand. Therefore, criminal protection in Islam could be accommodated with protection in Western societies, and shall not amount to what may be considered -from a Western point of view- to be severe physical punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the volume of electronic contracting continues to increase rapidly, legislatures around the world are evaluating existing contract law doctrines in light of new business practices. In that sense, there are two different approaches: European and American. Both European Union and United States legislators seem to agree that facilitative or enabling rules of contract law, in particular those from which parties may derogate, may not require fundamental reform, but mere adaptations. There is much more divergence with regard to the modern overlay of public law that characterises what was once the law of purely private contractual obligations. In Europe, as well as in Serbia, a generally stronger public sentiment in favour of regulation of markets leads legislators to work to update and preserve the content of existing regulations that limit the scope of private choice in markets. On contrary, United States relucted to restate existing regulations in terms that make their application to electronic contracts explicit. As a result, a gradual diminution of public oversight of market behaviour as economic activity assumes more on-line dimensions. This paper considers some of the strengths and weaknesses of certain recent law reforms in European Union, the United States and Serbia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online contracting, as a focal point of electronic commercial transactions, has been developing since the 1990s. Recent international legislation, namely the 2005 United Nations Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts (the UN Convention) is a significant legal achievement. However, the validity and effectiveness of electronic offer and acceptance is still an issue for debate. This paper aims to seek answers to how law makers may meet the challenge of regulating electronic contracting, and what future improvements that the UN Convention may need to make to boost confidence of contracting online. The paper will introduce the concept and formation of electronic contracts; analyse the current legislative environment of electronic contacting in the international organisations, EU, US and China; discuss the obstacles that electronic contracting has faced; and propose a solution to remove its legal uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how the courts use the doctrine of procedural unconscionability in voiding valid contracts formed over the Internet. The clickwrap and the browsewrap agreement are used in contract agreements in the Internet where assent to the contract is done through a click of a button. It concludes that this process is an efficient tool for e-commerce but can be vulnerable to procedural unconscionability and can be avoided by reformatting the terms of the agreement.

The aim of this article is to consider the need for regulation within the European Union (EU) in order to close the existing gap between the need for effective and fair online dispute resolution (ODR) mechanisms in electronic commerce and their actual use. At present, ODR relies on soft laws and self-regulation rather than legislative intervention. Yet, some aspects, such as mandatory ODR clauses included in electronic contracts and the enforceability of online awards, need to be supported by legislation and cannot be left exclusively to self-regulatory initiatives. This article suggests that establishing clear procedural standards in the ODR field will increase awareness as well as provide the necessary tools for promoting those ODR schemes that offer quality services by accrediting them with a pan-European trustmark. The article proposes that this can be achieved through a European directive, which will contribute to the development of ODR within the EU by allowing accredited ODR providers to offer mandatory services and issue enforceable decisions. Whether many disputes will be resolved online is not a matter of 'If', but of 'When' and 'How'. The question of exactly when is not of great importance; time will tell. The question of 'How' is what we should focus on. (Lodder 2006: 153) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era of information technology, businesses, through the use of the boundless Internet, can enter into international electronic contracts from anywhere in the world. The potential for cross-border disputes in electronic contracts is obviously much greater than in a paper-based environment, where a high degree of commercial contracts are domestic in nature. Can the traditional rules on jurisdiction, which are geographically orientated and generally rely on the place of performance, apply to the modern electronic contract disputes? This paper will analyse the EU and US approaches for determining jurisdiction in e-contracting cases and discuss the possibility of proposing specific jurisdiction rules for online contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parties often do not negotiate for contract terms. Instead, parties search for the products, terms, and contractual counterparties they desire. The traditional negotiation-centered view of contract leads courts to try to determine the meaning of the parties where no meaning was negotiated and to waste time determining the benefits of bargains that were never struck. Further, while courts have ample tools to validate specifically negotiated contract terms, they lack the tools to respond to searched-for terms. Although the law and literature have long recognized that there is a disconnect between the legal fictions of negotiation and the reality of contracting practice, no theory has emerged to replace fictional negotiation. Therefore, this Article develops a new search-oriented theory of contract and shows that search theory can explain contracting behavior where the fictions of negotiation fail. This Article then applies search theory to the common law of contract, the Uniform Commercial Code, and the growing world of Internet searches and electronic contracting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]