WTO Should Police International E-Business Rules

Computergram International, August 13, 1999

An international panel of executives from telcos, the media and the retail trade are to present proposals for voluntary regulation of e-business at a meeting with top government officials in Paris next month. And Thomas Middelhoff, chief executive of German media company Bertelsmann AG, who has been chairing the Global Business Dialogue on Electronic Commerce (GBDe), said they had reached a consensus on 95% of the issues involved. He said the only matters still to be thrashed out were authentication services to prevent fraud and a few other security issues.

The GBDe will prevent its proposals on September 13 to leading government officials from around the world including US commerce secretary William Daley, French prime minister Lionel Jospin and Japanese posts and telecommunications minister Seiko Noda.

Middelhoff believes that a global set of standards, ideally operated under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, was needed to replace the patchwork quilt of national laws. "Those of us in industries related to e-commerce have observed that international guidelines are lacking," he said.