Sri Lanka - reflections on e-commerce laws

What thing first of all worries people and sometimes even prevents from them trusting virtual economy?  Surely, it is its virtual safety and protection. Simply, people cannot trust anything that they cannot see. Today a lot of things were done to make people belive, trust and not be afraid to be involved in financial life of Internet. In our journal have described different  kinds of protection as well as law aspects to keep our readers informed. This article also concerns the topic of law and inamely the legislation of Sri Lanka.

A privacy regime is a mechanism that is in place to protect personal information which is stored or transferred into and out of a country.

"It is very important both the public and lawmakers become aware of the rights and obligations which form the focus of the debate on privacy," Gordon Hughes, professor in sociology and criminology says.

Computer crime and anti spam laws, telemarketing legislation and telecom systems interception legislation are some of the laws needed for the regime.

Some developing countries have not yet succeeded in establishing privacy regimes due to the lack of knowledge and ignorance on the subject by both state officials and citizens.

"Privacy does not really work as a legal concept unless people want to embrace it. It is fundamental to an effective privacy and data protection regime that people understand the need for privacy..."

Such a regime must also consider that privacy is a fundamental right.

"It is very important to strike the right balance, between privacy on the one hand and freedom of speech on the other. We do not want people locking up information that should be on the public domain on some spurious pretext of privacy."

Countries such as Australia, USA and organizations such as the EU have implemented privacy regimes in order to enhance public confidence on commercial transactions and other activities online.

Along with knowledge and confidence, there must also be well resourced authoritative bodies such as a privacy commission or a data protection authority to enforce laws on privacy and to monitor, Hughes says.

"For a proper privacy regime and an effective privacy framework that will encompass all aspects of privacy in the world's best practice ways, it requires more than just a privacy or data protection act," Hughes said at the 2008 ICT forum organized by LAWASIA.

Rules on interception of telecom and internet communication by individuals or legal bodies for legitimate purposes must also be present in a privacy regime and Sri Lanka, Hughes says, has addressed some of the issues on computer crime laws, which is a development.

But there are practical problems that confront lawmakers in areas of privacy and data protection such as the difficulty in detection of theft and the resources that are required.

With the advent of e-commerce, privacy and data protection issues also affect business transactions that are performed over the internet.

"The point has to be made that protection of personal data is fundamental to successful e-commerce," says Hughes.

If the general public fails to embrace Information Technology or e-commerce since they have doubts about protection of their personal information, businesses will not invest in IT infrastructure to establish e-commerce which will affect business.

"It is important for developing countries to avoid assuming a reputation of being an international safe heaven for spammers and hackers. Individuals' and national reputations can be sullied if an under-regulated jurisdiction suddenly becomes a haven for reckless or criminal behavior."

Implementation of appropriate privacy provides a major boost for commerce and e-commerce since overseas trading partners would not transact in an insecure environment.

Appropriate privacy for trading partners will in turn give their customers the confidence to use the system.

"It is important that countries do not succumb to an overdependence on individual global supply organizations in implementing IT infrastructure solutions as this can threaten the sovereignty of the state itself. The initiative has to come from within."

In conclusion we can say again that it is very important to be trusted and Sri Lanka is on a right way. As virtual economy became an integrated part of our life, so it cannot live with other rules. And legislation problems shall be similiar with consideration of all the specifics.

Aynny, reporter of Ecommerce Journal