Schedule

• Monday. Lecture/discussion on encryption and electronic payments.
• Wednesday.

Required Reading

1. Cavazos and Morin, Chapter 3: The Virtual Marketplace: Business Transactions on the Net
2. Electronic Commerce in the NII, prepared by XIWT.
3. Donna Hoffman and Thomas Novak, Commercializing the Information Superhighway
4. Internet and Web Use in the United States: Baselines for Commercial Development
5. Steven Levy, E-Money (That's What I Want)
6. Tim O'Reilly, Publishing Models for Internet Commerce, Comm. ACM, Vol. 39, No. 7, July 1996, pp. 79-86.
7. Amazon.com bookstore

Recommended Reading

1. CyberAtlas - The Internet Research Guide
2. Hal Varian, The Information Economy - Commerce Tatsuo Tanaka, Possible Economic Consequences of Digital Cash

Questions

1. What are the key claims of the authors?
2. What constitutes an electronic contract? What is the "mailbox rule" and how does it apply to cyberspace?
3. Must an electronic contract be "digitally signed" to be legally binding?
4. What are the advantages of electronic commerce? What are the shortcomings and deficiences of present systems and how might they be overcome?
5. What types of services are needed on the NII to enable electronic commerce?
6. What are the security requirements for electronic commerce?
7. What are possible scenarios for how the Internet will evolve with respect to electronic commerce?