Digi-sign Transfer of Pet Ownership Made Easy

Digi sign transfer of pet ownership

thanks very much for coming along this evening and inaugural lecture a number of you have asked me what's it all about and I've been looking around a bit and as to why people might do and inaugural lecture and I suppose the historic reason is to allow newly appointed professors either because they've been promoted or have new joined in university to present themselves so this is my presentation to you all Here I am but also it's a good opportunity to set out a research agenda which is very much what I intend to do in my talk this evening which will not go on until 8 o'clock I isn't it's also an interesting opportunity for those of you are not regularly involved in the law school I see a few faces who are not normally part of the law school to find out what we do in the laws got Warwick and some of the both fairly novel things that we tend to do at Warwick which I'm hoping to contribute to with my research but most importantly apparently and inaugural lecture is a celebration or as Roger currently put at a party and I'm sure there will be a party a bit later on but before then I'm afraid you will have to indulge me a little bit whilst I'm use about the future of international commercial law in the digital world and I'll try and do that in basically four broad steps I'll start off by looking at what I mean by international commercial law it's one of those phrases where there's a lot of disagreement as to what exactly it covers and Continental colleagues will often take quite a different view from common law colleagues and so I will try and explain what I mean by international commercial law and give a little bit of background to that as it's so common with the digital world because well then move on to is to say a few words about the digital world and some of the new business models which have sprung up in the digital world then think generally about what developments such as the digital world might mean for law and the need of law to respond to such developments and finally come full circle by drawing the link between international commercial law and the digital world trying to survey the current state of affairs and also to identity where there is a need for immediate future action and perhaps also some degree of long-term perspective so that's basically what I will try and do in about 45 minutes or so this evening let's start with the basics commercial law what is commercial and therefore what is international commercial law when I talk about commercial arm and English scholars generally talk about commercial law they tend to focus on transactions essentially types of contract entered into between commercial parties and commercial law is primarily concerned with all these legal principles and rules which relate to the private rights of the parties to a transaction so it's not concerned for example with trade law and the regulation of trade which is more matter for international economic law economic law generally it's not concerned with corporate law and the regulation of business structures it is not concerned with financial regulation and the way the conduct of banks for example is monitored by regulators it's very much concerned with contracts and of course in at the heart of every commercial transaction tends to be a very basic type of contract Needle illustrated by the one on the slide here between a seller or a supplier of goods services or digital content or a combination of those and Samadhi who wants to buy or acquire these goods services or digital content straightforward contract every first account a class student will be bored to death with these types of contracts but that's where it starts then it carries on so from this basic type of transaction we moved to perhaps the situation whereby the contract is negotiated by involving a third party so if somebody called an agent getting involved representing the seller or supplier perhaps negotiating a contract with a buyer and bringing about this contract that we then have between seller and buyer so that's another type of commercial transaction the relationship involving an agent here sometimes especially in international contracts once the good once there's a contract in place for the sale of goods you have to obviously insure the goods are moved from the seller to the buyer and this involves transport quite often email of international carriage so there will be a but contract of carriage with a third party carrier it's another type of contract we might have a special arrangement whereby payment by the buyer is arranged through a system called the documentary credit system this is a system which involves banks a trusted third parties don't laugh trust of the parties to provide both seller and buyer with some reassurance that money won't be put beyond the buyers reach until the seller has done his part of the bargain but also to give a guarantee to the seller that once he has for example dispatched the goods he will get paid for what he has done there and banks are stepping in as intermediaries another type of commercial transaction then we might have slightly different types of arrangement for example the seller or indeed a bank may supply goods or might take some kind of security interest over goods to ensure that if the buyer hasn't yet paid that he will pay eventually so there might be for example a reservation of ownership clause in the contract between seller and buyer the seller may supply the goods only on lease so the goods are only supplied for a temporary period similarly a bank may for example advance some money to the buyer and take a security interest over goods or indeed physical assets belonging to the buyers another type of transaction and finally perhaps the seller may try and ensure he gets paid for money which is due under contracts of the buyer by selling his right to receive payment to a bank or to a type of business called a factor and that way the buyer will then have to pay the bank or the factor whereas the seller will receive money early on so you can see there's a whole range of different transactions which are found in the commercial or field the interesting bit is when you have a sell and supplier and a buyer from one country and from another country and indeed once you have for example a bank in a third country a carry on a fourth country and so on that's when we get into the realm of international commercial law and those are the kinds of rules which are concerned specifically those cross-border transactions those transactions which affect multiple jurisdictions and when we talk about international commercial law we are particularly focusing on commercial law which has its origin in not just in domestic laws but primarily an international adream its international texts which I intended to provide a degree of commonality for the number of countries which might subscribe to these rules why do we need it we need it because of a multi jurisdictional nature of international commercial contracts because otherwise we would have to spend a lot of time working out what the applicable law is that's bills job primarily to teach students that's very complicated but fascinating so what international commercial Australia is trying to kind of remove the the impact of having significant differences between different jurisdictions to try and remove some of the severity of perhaps choosing the wrong law or being stuck with the law that wasn't expected by ensuring that for international commercial transactions we have common international rules in place well sounds very nice doesn't it but when we look at international commercial law we can see that this is primarily driven by a number of or a small number of international organizations one is an SI trial the United Nations Commission on international trade law which has been responsible for quite a few of the key texts in commercial law on many of the topics I mentioned a few moments ago a second big player is Uni draft the Institute for the unification of private law which again has introduced a number of important measures in the field of international commercial law the third one is the ICC the International Chamber of Commerce which has primarily focused on introducing default standard contract terms such as the Incoterms but also the documentary credit rules which are governing these transactions involving banks in arranging payments on the interesting feature of international commercial which is what fascinates me quite significantly is this focus on on harmonization or unification of trying to find common standards we could be attractive to a large number of jurisdictions because despite the similarities we might see in many commercial laws if you compare different jurisdictions there are still quite significant differences from Canton which can catch people out and it's always fascinating to see how we might try and overcome some of these differences to try and come up with rules which might be common to a number of different legal families and different legal systems the way we try and get there is by a number of different measures the two most significant ones are conventions which are effectively binding treaties negotiated are quite a high level and eventually ratified entered into by individual nation states these are binding treaties which are applicable as between those countries which sign up to those without any further need for amending domestic laws necessarily it might require some changes but for the sake of argument this is how it works model laws are quite different in the sense that they merely offer a template for national governments to develop their own domestic laws based on a model law there's a focus and encouragement to try and copy out the model law as closely as possible but that won't always be possible but at least offers a template and again the objective is to ensure a significant degree of commonality between different jurisdictions we can have lower-level articles such as guides which is in the offer indication of the main issues that might need to be considered and of course finally we have the you need reference to polls on international commercial contracts as a kind of standalone document to govern commercial contracts particularly in the context of arbitration for example all these initiatives of three big bodies involved in this have of course led to a significant number of adopted texts but when we look at the degree to which individual governments have supported these the picture becomes a lot more patchy and in fact a lot of time and effort has gone into ratifying sorry into drafting a lot of conventions and model laws but their subsequent neutralization is rather mix some have got quite a bit of support some have got a limited support and some have never gained any kind of formal endorsement by anybody so what we don't have although some people would very much like it is a global commercial code extinct Oh Marshall code applicable to all commercial transactions that something that just haven't really made it into into existence I'm not going to talk about all of these this is just to flag up the different areas where we have conventions and indeed modern laws ranging from popular ones such as the arbitration one and the UN Convention and the international set of goods we've got an large number of state ratifications to less successful ones for example the convention agency has only secured five ratifications other what others have also secured rather low numbers of ratifications model laws in the same way some of been extremely successful some are so new that we don't yet know how successful they're going to be although Julianna will ensure reassure us that the model law on secure transactions will be extremely successful so fingers crossed you might be right there Julianna a few general problems that I see are before I get on to the more interesting bits the entire process of drafting these conventions of agreeing these model laws is incredibly slow and cumbersome it takes a long time we're talking about years possibly decades of some of these and also there's of an underlying tension in most instances between trying to find a rule at the international level which is best for international commercial transactions and one that reflects the different interests which different jurisdictions might have which they might be reluctant to cede and this inevitably resolves in compromises to find a balance between these competing interests and that does affect the quality of say the conventions which might be agreed and indeed the model laws or they're not so much with the model laws people tend to be less persistent when it comes to model laws but certainly when it comes to conventions there is a lot of tension and actually achieving the right sort of text not least because treaties as they government have to go through quite a complex diplomatic process and then have to go through the process of ratification and the words decisions by individual governments to sign up to these conventions and make them part of their law and even when this happens we are left with a big problem in consistency in terms of the way these international texts are applied and indeed interpreted and this is a perennial issue despite some quite violent attempts in the context of the sales convention to try and deal with that matter but it hasn't had a great deal of success so let's come on to the next state the more interesting which I think this was a general background to what international commercialized but of course we're interested in how it affects the digital world so when we talk about the digital world what do we mean let me say a few words about the context in which this digital world has arisen it's of course down to the way technology has developed rapidly over the last two or three decades or so you know most of you will have probably got a smartphone or something in your pockets on your table the I can see one there for example here people got smart phones computing capacity is enormous these days when I was a teenager you know of spotty 13-year old I had this amazing computer Commodore 64 with 64 kilobits of memory it was incredible could do all sorts with uh play games do word processing you know but you know 64 kilobits come on you know these days of course we're talking about gigabytes and terabytes and so I'm talking completely different dimensions and that rapidly happened in the last few years it's grown enormous lianna dev increasing speed what this has allowed is the development of what is now known as smart computing technology you all have your smart many of you will have smartphones you will see smart technology in other areas some people might have fancy gadgets at home or which they control the entire household environment for example they can control their digi box from their phone and they can control a heating from their phone and their boil and everything so you can have a lot of this technology now in a very compact form add to this the increasing spread of high spree has been broadband there is quite a bit of that although I think a lot of us will think we're not coming that our problem it is high speed despite promises made by B to your other suppliers but that is the story we have high speed broadband we have the increasing use of digital content in other words software or you know applications which control a lot of our devices most physical items now rely on software to function properly not just your phones and your computers and so on but very basic household items like your dishwasher or your washing machine your car of course VW they're all controlled by software and digital content and the way the software's designed allows somebody who controls that software to influence the performance of a physical device yeah all of this take together is often referred to as disruptive technology after a guy called Kristensen who came with his notion of disruptive technology technology which really impacts on the way existing misses one has operate and pushes towards the creation of new business models and in this case new digital business models in particular and that's our digital world now when we talk about disruptive technology where do we see the main impact has he followed the seen as a has an only flash up we see a lot of shifting from the physical environment simply to the digital environment I think everybody now is familiar with online shopping yeah I think most of you have used Amazon you might be reluctant about using Amazon but you but if you stammers on and you will have bought books at Amazon 30 years ago 25 years ago you would have gone to the high street to a book shop it's a place where they have books on shelf and you can browse and choose the books you like and you could have a read and put them back if you don't like them yeah so that's obviously change code or shopping online yeah I still have to go down to the Sainsbury's or Waitrose anymore you can just do it online and avoid a lot of hassle that way lots of things have happened which I've simply moved physical ways of conducting business to the digital viral but that's all the exciting stuff the exciting stuff has happened since starting with the rise of the platform economy yeah the way we now use online platforms as an intermediary as a forum where large numbers of suppliers scattered all around the world can get in touch with large numbers of customers Amazon of course is a classic example of Alibaba the Asian version of it but also our famous sharing economy platforms such as air B&B or uber most of you have heard about uber which isn't really a platform where that's a different story which I'd love to leave for another time shape where's the very famous one and some of my students found out about today that's one big development the second big development I'm absolutely enthralled by is the spread of 3d printing or additive layer manufacturing to give it its proper way proper phrase this is the way whereby physical items are now designed as electronic files are see ad files computer-aided design files and can be printed on demand these goods can be heavily customised to suit an individual's needs and the technologies already used quite widely in certain sectors interestingly in the medical sector for example where it's now possible to print devices to really suit somebody's individual requirements yeah so hip joined us designed for your own hip before it's long there might be a hard valve designed to suit your own heart but hey to use the stomach woman that was a an issue so they're interesting developments there with additive layer manufacturing the Internet of Things connected devices the way devices not talk to one another how sensors are used in everything to provide data to allow people to adjust the performance of devices allow devices to talk to one another all sorts of possibilities have arisen here a very common example which isn't actually that practical is the self ordering fridge of course a fridge which can monitor how much you've got left in your fridge and it can reorder your milk just before the best-before date has been reached in your current supply and I can just restock your fridge whenever you want so all of a sudden as there are Sainsbury's or other supermarkets a ring on your door I'm saying your fridge is just out of these Goods can you put them away that's the story the more significant he is of some use for example in a commercial environment where there's proper stock monitoring using sensor technology and the last for example supermarkets to be restocked on the basis of just-in-time delivery yeah there's a continuous monitoring of stock and as soon as stock runs low the system triggers a reorder without somebody having to do money on stock check and ring up the supplier I won't say too much about robotics and artificial intelligence both are heavily on the rise robots are getting more complex and more capable more agile and are starting to learn for themselves how they should do certain jobs it's still very basic at the moment we're not quite yet at the stage where we've got humans portrayed on the channel 4 programme replacing real-life humans but we might move in that direction eventually the data economy is another big development date has become an important feature of economic dealings whether as a separate commodity as a subject of a contract in its own right as a way of paying for things which you have all done perhaps not realizing because most of you will have downloaded apps from the Play Store or from the I store onto your phones paid nothing for it while you have paid you've paid with your personal data which is worth a lot to some of these businesses and the increase in seeing how data is being used in combination with algorithms to tailor your online experience whether it's the kinds of things you see on Facebook or on Twitter to the kinds of suggestions Amazon makes when you go on to the Mazon website to the pricing that Amazon sets or the website set for the goods you might be looking at discriminatory pricing is a big issue I think increasingly finally of course we have distributed ledger technology the blockchain which of course is most famously used for the rather less successful Bitcoin currency but also has quite significant prot complications just slowly being developed for example from a commercial point of view the rise of smart contracts is really something which is attracting a lot of attention the way you can convert contracts from a basic document into a series of event in the blockchain and which can then be performed through the blockchain so one practical application we've seen for example is a very basic travel insurance situation whereby an insurance will pay out as soon as your flight has been cancelled you don't have to make a claim the insurance will monitor flight data information as soon as the trigger point has been reached saying the flights being canceled you will be credited with the money you need to rebook your flight it's all happening automatically by the blockchain there's an interesting application what does it mean for law how does law respond to such technological developments it's obviously a challenge for law to keep pace with these very exciting technological developments but of course having to keep pace with developments is nothing new it law has always had to adapt to significant leaps in technology think about when Transport moved from horseback to the motor car that we significant changes to the law to reflect that for example so having to think about technological developments is something which has always been built into the law to some extent legislation has often been designed with a degree of future proofing in mind for example in my previous life as a consumer lawyer I spent quite a bit of time looking at the regulation of unfair commercial practices which happens in the UK through the consumer protection of Ontario of the consume objection against unfair trading regulations than 2008 and there we have a law which is quite flexibly designed to be adaptable to a whole range of different circumstances including circumstances which couldn't be envisaged back in 2005 when the European directive behind these regulations was first adopted so there's a degree of future proofing and the extent to which the directive is future proved is being tested now as the Commission develops guidance to see how the directive might apply to some of the developments in the digital economy so far so good it looks like it's just about doable the difficulty is that previous technological developments while it's also probably disruptive haven't been developing at the same pace and not to the same extent as the of evolution and a completely different ballgame as far as speed and size of the revolution which is happening in the digital world and that will soon highlight the limitations of future proofing it will mean that once we can try and accommodate some possibly quite a few of these developments with an existing law we may have to move onwards and come up with new legislation new ideas we may need new rules the number of reasons why we might need such a new rules first of all of course existing rules may simply no longer be relevant may be obsolete I think some of you may know when the motor car was first introduced in the United Kingdom yet have added a man walking in front of the car with a red flag to warm people but soon the cars were a lot faster than the person walking in front and that created more problems than it was worth so the rule was obsolete and had to be removed some of the rules that we have might be narrow that we don't have might be necessary to facilitate new developments some we need to control or restrict developments some things we might not want to happen despite the fact that they can happen for example we might not want price discrimination by an online platform and therefore we might want rules to prevent that if existing rules don't allow us to do that already well whenever you have a new development there's a real sort of danger in many ways from a legislative point of view you've got to look very carefully at the development and decide whether the time for action has already come sometimes there might be worth your while just to wait and see as to what will happen so there's a sort of cautious approach but there's a danger there that you might either end up with a legal framework which is entirely unsuitable already or that you miss the boat and introducing appropriate regulation and any development would take on a life of its own a big question at the moment is to what extent online platforms also have been regulated more closely already there's a lot of work being done now in controlling the way for example Facebook and Twitter deal with some of the harmful content that might be published online but that might be a bit too late and he said something about horse and stable dog that sounds like such an old-fashioned metaphor I don't they want to bring that back so what sort of methodology that's law need to try and become more robust in responding to these new developments I think first of all the important thing is to understand what these new business models that I introduced a few moments ago actually do what is 3d printing all about what is the platform economy all about what's going on I actually get the understanding of what happens what does uber really do turns out they're not a platform at all they're a pipeline that simply organizes a big transport company as we've now had confirmed by both UK and European courts interesting developments so understand the business model then very carefully think about what your legal questions are regarding these new business models what are you really interested in what is really causing concern with platforms for example what are the main legal questions is that perhaps the status of suppliers in the platform are they our businesses and therefore compliant with consumer law yeah how are they hobbyists just offering something on the platform without any kind of obligation towards consumer protection law are they people who started out as private sellers on eBay who've made it such a successful venture by selling all the unnecessary belongings that they're now classed as a business and never have to comply with consumer protection laws this is a very basic question online platforms or the likes of uber or eBay or Amazon be directly liable to a customer for the performance of the underlying support those are the kinds of questions you might identify and many many more what you then do is once you've identified what your questions now you see what the existing law will do how far can you push the existing law sensibly in order to perhaps find answers to some of these problems these dilemmas you might take things quite a long way you might also though identify now there are gaps in existing laws though there are unnecessary rules in existing laws which will create obstacles and that there's simply unresolved questions for which you will do will not find any answer in existing laws and that's when you have to go along and think what my need to be done next can you for example deal with some of these gaps just by clarifying the way existing rules should be applied there's been a gray area especially in English law where case law of course always leaves plenty of gray areas as many contra law students will undoubtedly confirm sometimes they need to make minor reforms just to clarify the way is it extortion work mine mend ments might have solve the trick or you might have to go for much wider reform because if identified an obstacle or a gap or an unresolved issue which really requires a fresh approach a fresh answer so what wider reforms could we think about we could look at what the problem is and see if we can borrow from existing rules and transfer what they have done enable in one context into a different context so for example the regulation of software or digital content which is a very prevalent topic now has for many many years caused a lot of headaches because people have been trying to categorize a contract involving the supply of software of digital content and if in all sorts of contortions to try and say it's either supply of goods or a supply of services very often for the simple reason that there are existing laws in place our deal with the supply of goods or the supply of services and at least we can borrow those rules but they're not necessarily ideal for a contract involving the supply of digital content see many different rules but you can possibly draw a parallel as has happened for example in the UK between Goods and digital content because the concern is quite often about adequate quality and fitness for purpose of digital content and there are the existing laws in place in the context of goods so why not borrow from those rules and develop rules on digital content by analogy this is what happened in the consumer context and the consumer rights acts 2015 in the UK the European Union is about to finalize its own directive on this topic with a slightly different approach it doesn't completely follow the approach to goods in the way deals with digital content but the approach is broadly similar there are quite significant variations in the detail but the approach is similar but that might not be the best way forward we might need completely new solutions for what are effectively entirely new problems for example may identify that the the very paradigm on which is snores based for example a two-party contract which we saw right at the beginning really doesn't work anymore with the complex contractual networks we see on platforms can we analyze platforms as a sequence of bilateral contracts or do we have something completely different and this may mean that both existing legal rules and the underlying principles or concepts and no longer suitable in the digital environment so we have to develop new legal regimes and some examples just to throw them up for example liability regimes in the internet of things on 3d printing we have multiple parties coming together at the same time to produce something so for example with 3d printing where it's not possible for example for a business to print an item which it has acquired via a software fire from a supplier that can print it on premises for which they have to acquire a printer and the raw materials to do the printing so all of a sudden instead of buying the finished item the finished component from its supplier the business may now by the software file from one supplier the printer from another the materials from a third and it needs somebody to operate the printer consistently so the entire question of liability changed because he's handing of multiple parties involved and of leaving aside the incredible burden of proof that might arise similarly online platforms a lot of work is currently being done within the European Law Institute working group of which I am a member and we started off by trying to do all this via contractual relationships and at the most recent meeting we were looking at the use of relationship between suppliers and the platform we were getting to the stage where we are thinking contract laws really reach its limits and we might have to take a different approach and perhaps borrow from competition law and develop a whole new market based model in the way platforms are regulated we'll wait and see what others will eventually produce so there's something that might happen in the not-too-distant future so we've looked at international commercial law we've looked at the basic ingredients of the digital world we've looked at the challenges for law when it comes to dealing with technological developments in general and some pointers as to what might happen in the digital world let's not bring this together with international commercial law why should it matter from the international commercial law point of view that we have a digital world all of it seems to be about consumers well there is quite a bit of emphasis on consumers but that doesn't mean that a lot of these developments and relevant to commercial parties and we will soon see a number of instances where the digital revolution is really important for commercial parties and of course bearing in mind that the Internet and the digital world generally is borderless you would think that international level action is probably required at least in some instances we can see the way for example Digital developments already affect the way international commerce works with my group this morning in my Master's group we were talking about the way 3d printing has the potential to really undermine global trade some speculations suggest that up to 50% of global trade can be replaced by 3d printing in the next three decades which means essentially that instead of trading goods and shipping goods all around the world all would be doing is sending design files around the world through the internet and all these goods are now printed locally either on-site in a factory if we're talking about components or for a local or regional specialized 3d printing companies and we'll take away a lot of the transactions we currently have in terms of arranging global trade and a lot of the trade agreements which are based on physical training Goods might cease to be relevant because all of a sudden the trading digital content yeah there's all sorts of new questions which may need to be addressed that is just at the international level so you might ask well surely there has been some recognition of this an international commercial does already address some of these things well you'd be surprised how little international commercial law does let me do a very quick survey and it will be quick as that isn't very much to talk about when it comes to looking at international commercial law and digital matters it all started in 1996 when UNCITRAL developed a model law on e-commerce just to help individual countries develop their domestic laws to facilitate ecommerce now 1990s the internet have barely be made available if anybody was born after 1996 yes we still used to do old-fashioned things I pick up the telephone and talk to people we used to rebook them used to go to the shops to negotiate things and write on paper but in 1996 the internet had just been made available it became globally accessible and therefore the economic potential was realized almost immediately and answers are presented a model law very much designed just to try and make sure that existing legal rules would work in the digital environment so the approach that was the initiative taken was not to say oh god it's something completely new and different we need new rules it was to say okay what do we need to tweak to make sure familiar rules can be used in the digital environment so in many ways to use the language of an update or a patch that's precisely what was done existing laws were effectively patched we are updated with a number of rules which dealt with basic issues such as the validity of electronic or digital communications with ways of expressing requirements familiar from the paper world the physical world such as the use of writing or signature or the irrelevance of an original document with a function equivalent and it addressed basic questions such as when the digital message is dispatched and received I won't talk about the detail here because I would take us another three hours interestingly at the time 71 state and and over 150 jurisdictions adopted legislation based on this model law 7100 of jurisdictions of course the United States itself has 50 jurisdictions and they've all come for the model loss that's why we've got many more jurisdictions in the States this was followed in 2001 by a model law on these signatures which is very much out of date in so many ways so I won't talk about that any further but it has been a convention on electronic communications adopted in 2005 which effectively takes many of the provisions from the model law and writes them into an international treaty so the assumption seems to be ok these rules work we'll make them an international standard a lot of what the Convention does is again try and take this patching approach this updating approach and it does on the basis of two key principals the first one is the so called functional equivalence principle try and find things in the digital environment which perform the same function that certain things will perform in the physical world okay so find out what is functionally equivalent to a signature for example in the digital context but do so also and this is where things get a bit difficult do so in a way that doesn't tie you to any particular technology because of course technology develops rapidly and what might be current in 2005 will already be out of date by 2008 so it tries to be technological neutral what it does is it essentially replicated from the model law but also has additional provisions clarifying for example that a website is simply asking people to make an offer to enter into contract ideas interestingly with the validity of contracts either with or indeed between what what are called automated messaging systems in other words computers talking to one another this is the kind of scenario we have in the internet of things for example or perhaps self-driving cars - constantly talking to other machines and a very basic rule on the correction of input errors again nothing particularly earth-shattering the convention is enforced but only between a small number of countries that have all listed on the sheet here on the slide here Cameroon Congo that the dominant Dominican Republic Fiji Honduras Montenegro Russia Singapore and Sri Lanka but not exactly you know a widespread in the world of global international trades so not a huge number fortifications interestingly President Obama and the dyeing months of his presidency did recommend to Senate and they might ratify this particular convention how much if he was joking it was trying to tease Senate about point of time but he did make the recommendation which unsurprisingly Senate didn't take up just to give you a very brief flavor of how this convention deals with this idea of functional equivalence and technological neutrality let me just pick a couple of examples the requirement that a document has to be in writing how is that reflected as a functionally equivalent approach well it says that something is this is the functional equivalent of being in writing if there's information contained in the electronic communication which is as accessible so as to be suitable so its are usable for subsequent reference well that tells you everything you need to know doesn't it similarly a requirement that a document has to be signed is the chief if you use a method which is used to identify the party and to indicate that partisan tension in respect of the information contained in the electronic communication well that's a nice way of describing the function of a signature but how do you achieve that in the digital environment well by using a method which is as reliable as appropriate for the purpose for which the electronic communication was generated everybody happy now no because I am what it's it's very interesting but also very useless because it doesn't tell you anything about how you actually develop for example a method that satisfies the requirements the conventions to me doesn't address the next step it gives you these basics but doesn't go any further but there is hope because in 2017 answer trial agree this model law on electronically transferable records electronically transferable records basically relates to documents which are very common in international commerce where being in possession of the document itself and titles you to receive performance of the attached obligations so for example a bill of lading or a blood exchange might be examples of this so the idea is that you have the document means you can demand performance hundreds of the document the model law tries to reflect this notion that the person in possession has the right to demand performance by working out what the hallmark of possession is if you're on possession of something you are effectively able to control whatever it is that's in your possession so instead of talking about possession of an electronic record the model law talks about control over the atomic record yeah so possession of a transfer document instrument that requirement is met with respect to an electronic transferable record if a reliable method is used here we go again what's not going to be to establish exclusive control of that electronic transferable Kord by a person and to identify that person as the person in control but what is more interesting not just the way this particular idea of functional equivalence is reflected is the recognition in this model law something that the convention is lacking but which is a really important development that you can basically satisfy the reliable method criterion by complying with any available applicable international standards now international standards are technical rules quite often developed under the auspices of the international standards organization the ISO which some of you may have heard about or parts of the European never buy sin you may have heard about cen standards those are standards which are offering a lot more detail as to how you satisfy certain broad flexible requirements that might be pinned down a legislation and there's an increasing school of thought developing that says we can do a lot more by combining legal rules and broad standards to give a much more comprehensive regulatory framework instead of trying to do everything through legislation other areas where we have action easily summarized about the electronic registry under the Capetown Convention I'll come back to this in a moment we've had some additional discussions for example it's been a long-standing debate in the literature on the sales convention whether the definition of goods extends to software and all sorts of interesting debates there we also have some suggestions for example that in the air of secure transactions there ought to be better recognition of electronic means of self-help so Juliana does more work for you to be done there in the future and there are some work ongoing at ANSTO trial right now on Identity Management and Trust services and cloud computing but none of the developments which are highlighted earlier interestingly none of that is currently on the agenda Dunsey trial so what can we say about ICL and its role in the digital world so far it's done by a little beyond addressing the shift from physical to the digital environment but it should be able to do more because one of the big strengths of international commercial or more generally is to identify those really significant obstacles international commerce and develop appropriate solutions and that's where I say all should come into its own if you bear in mind the special nature of the digital world the fact that is in a global borderless you can't really compare mentalize what goes on in the digital world by simply drawing national boundaries you do need to have a high level of coordination between different jurisdictions to ensure a consistent approach that will support digital international commerce rather than impeded by having slid national rules suddenly making things impossible so where do we go from here what's the future well the immediate future I think is to do the unthinkable and to try and update existing ICL measures to try and update existing conventions which of course runs into its own difficulties because a lot of table data convention you need a new international treaty to amend the Convention and I can take decades its current form but there are important challenges beyond updating for example there has to be clarity at the international level how you deal with digital content you cannot go on by having these rather complex and rather difficult contortions as to whether digital content might be account for goods or services or content of hire or something else it needs to be addressed head-on in a way that makes digital content clearly tradable as something in its own right not least because of the likely change is that 3d printing will introduce in the international commercial environment that needs to be clarity but also things like smart goods goods which are controlled by software digital content is extremely important that regard we need to have clarity and how we deal with data as a commodity data as an object of Commerce not just as something that's subject to quite detailed data protection rules to protect fundamental values we have to find the right balance here to ensure that trade and data can operate online platforms can offer a lot of potential not just for consumer sales but also of course for global services to global service industry where platforms can be set up to connect suppliers of services all around the world with customers all around the world and again that might require pulse regulation of service provision as well as the relationship one plan the international level and of course the blockchain and the applications that we might have in the blockchain one of the big advantages of the blockchain is that it can replace business models and indeed legal environments which rely on a trusted third party intermediary so going back to the beginning our documentary credit system involving banks could be replaced entirely by an efficient blockchain application but that will raise new questions about how the blockchain is regulated and how blockchain developments interact with relevant national laws so that clear challenges sent a national commercial law the main challenges start with it's very basic features and hallmarks the fact that ICL has suffered from very much this top-down approach based on reaching compromises between individual individual jurisdictions trying to refocus on domestic state law interests and trying to balance those this has all been very well so far in a different kind of geopolitical context it's no longer feasible in the digital world we need to have the involvement of multiple stakeholders in the drafting of an appropriate legal framework we can't do it simply by having negotiations between governments we need much Swift and more agile procedures the lengthly diplomatic process that we currently have simply doesn't work anymore and we have to be much more flexible and perhaps at the most basic level we need to learn to combine legal rules with international standards much more broadly there has to become a new patent subject of course to the proviso that would ensure a reasonable degree of transparency and accountability in the way these standards are created we can't simply defer to obscure international agencies drafting things without any kind of accountability so there are problems there as well ICL does have a model for this already so it wouldn't be an entirely new approach well when I need to be modified and that is the Cape Town Convention quality most successful international treaties it was adopted in 2001 to develop an answer to a problem for international financing particularly for aircraft which is where the convention has its main application so far it allows a lender or somebody who supplies an aircraft on the least in term for example to register its interest over the aircraft in an international registry and therefore the international interest is enforceable in all the countries which have sign up to this treaty of which they are quite a few and we're talking about I think 70 of there abouts at the moment the interesting thing is the way the captain convention works it has a so-called baseline Convention which deals with all the fundamental issues that should be relevant to all the different types of goods where three categories essentially at the moment to which the convention is ultimately intended to apply in this case the aircraft railway rolling stock and space equipment however the detailed rules dealing with the specific requirements of the airline industry and the railway industry and the space industry are set down in separate protocols so the Detailers worked out in a separate document which is tailored for one particular industry okay the problem is as they are protocols they also need to be ratified by States still falling back on the difficult sort of reliance on individual states signing up to these things but the other interesting thing is that the drafting of these protocols involve not only governments and lawyers but it they involve interest groups representing the industries themselves the airline industry airline manufacturers banks involved in financing aircraft for example they were all involved in the discussions leading up to the drafting of the protocols and that significantly improved the quality and has really been behind the rapid success of the convention sign in 2001 in force in 2005 and extremely wide numbers ratifications and clear evidence of a significant economic impact I don't think likes of easyJet and Ryanair would have had as many aircraft as they have now if it hadn't been for this convention I mean a very significant contributor in reducing the cost of acquiring aircraft so this model could be used for the digital world in the same way yeah we could have a convention establishing sake EP principles and essentially good rules for example what we do about digital content but then leave some of the more detail questions to international standards provided of course these international standards are developed in a transparent and accountable fashion now promised I wouldn't talk for more than 50 minutes I'm getting their fresh hold so let me just throw the last few conclusions to wrap things up what have we seen this evening in a fairly broad brush way well I hope people have seen this anyway clearly the digital world will have a huge impact on the way international business operates now so many new business models developing and they really affect the way existing this is become international commerce structured and the rise of digital business models will eventually be really significant Lee felt this prompts new legal issues that will need to be addressed but chris is not just internationally but also regionally and indeed domestically but there will be certain issues that need to be addressed at the international level at the moment yeah despite the fact that we need a global response to some of these international commercial are is not in its current shape ready for these new developments both in terms of its methodology but also in terms of the rules which we currently have we stood a very basic level so there has to be a lot of work done at a fairly rapid pace to ensure that international commerce is not left without an appropriate international level framework to support it of course you might want to say well sure just wait and see what happens about international commerce to what extent there really will be this big impact it's 3d printing really gonna be that revolutionary is the blockchain really going to replace a documentary credits or this is just you know a nice blue skies thinking blues the theme tonight of course or is it something else yeah however if we are too slow and don't recognize that there's a challenge we might end up with having too many legal obstacles which will be a real impediment international commercial activity and of course if that doesn't support the digital economy properly it makes life just so much more difficult and so much more expensive and of course that's not what we want and at this point I'm done thank you very much [Applause]