IP: more more on European Law Seen As Grave Threat To E-Commerce

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> Subject: Re: IP: more on European Law Seen As Grave Threat To E-Commerce
> From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry () piermont com>
> Date: 11 Sep 1999 08:47:15 -0400
> Lines: 48
>
>
> > > Of course, how to make a company operating "virtually" actually
> > > accountable is not clear. But to say that this direction is a threat
> > > to E Commerce is not correct. It is simply a prejudice for a company
> > > based in US whose main market is the US and other markets are
> > > marginals. It probably repreents an opportunityfor the others, as
> > > long as their business respect proper behaviour, and the law of the
> > > countries are sound.
>
> The problem with this statement is that even if the law of the
> countries in question is sound it would still be just plain impossible
> to comply with the laws of ALL of the countries in question.
>
> In the U.S., where we have fifty different sets of (similar)
> commercial law, one for each state, it was realized long ago that you
> could not have commerce function if the laws of all the states in
> which the participants of a multi-state transaction lived involved in
> a case. Typically, contracts specify the laws of ONE of the states
> involved, in order to create some assurance that everyone knows what
> set of laws will be invoked in a dispute and can attempt to comply
> with them even before a dispute occurs.
>
> If this is needed in a situation where the conflicting laws are very
> similar, imagine a situation in which one is vending to multiple
> countries with totally different commercial law traditions at the same
> time.
>
> I hate to make a near-prejudiced statement, but the nations of Europe
> and the EU have managed to produce an amazingly business-unfriendly
> environment with a thicket of irrational laws that conflict with
> virtually all reasonable legal and business practice. As a result,
> Europe has an unemployment rate that which the U.S. experienced in the
> 1970s -- indeed, in many countries, it is within a stone's throw of
> that which the U.S. experienced during the Great Depression. Only the
> state social welfare apparatus has kept these nations from
> experiencing intolerable pain under these circumstances.
>
> Even if our current economic prosperity here in the U.S. were to
> utterly disintegrate and our unemployment rate triple, we couldn't
> even match the rates in much of Europe. Before claiming any new idea
> from the European Commission might be a good idea, one must question
> whether or not the entire set of "good ideas" they've had for the last
> fifteen years have been, on balance, of benefit to the people of
> Europe. Sure, all these lovely laws about "consumer protection" and
> such sound lovely on paper, but in the end, all they seem to do is
> assure that people decide not to do business in Europe at all.
>
> Perry