Online arbitration: A vehicle for dispute resolution in Electronic commerce

Posted by M. Saleh Jaberi on March 06, 2011


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1. Another issue is security of these contracts. Some believe that security of emailand web sites is less than letters or telegrams; therefore, the legislator should notadmit these contracts. Nevertheless security systems and electronic cryptography result in increasing security in these methods, on the other hand, security risk in these contracts cannot be an obstacle for their validity

Chapter II: Arbitration Proceeding Traditional arbitrations form by three parties (plaintiff, defendant, and arbitrators) and face to face discussion is a fundamental factor in them. By emergence of technology as a fourth party in the online arbitrations and elimination of face to face discussion, significant changes have occurred in these arbitrations.Although some believe that the lack of face to face communications would not allow the development of ODR, development of techs and possibility of talking simultaneously which is companied by voice and picture, make these kinds of prediction unreliable.

A: process of online arbitration. A dispute which is appeared between two merchants may root in transactions in the cyberspace or out of it. In both circumstances, parties can settle their dispute by online arbitration. From the beginning of this arbitration until issuing an award, a few processes should be taken. We are inquiring them as far as possible.

1. Beginning of arbitration: if the parties have compromised on the online arbitration, after arising of dispute, the parties may act in two forms. The first method is that one party informs another by email to select his arbitrator, or if the parties have compromised on solo arbitrator, suggest his preferable arbitrator. The second method, which many arbitration institutes use it, is a web-based arbitration. In this style, plaintiff refers to the website of arbitration institute and registers his request. After registration of an arbitration request, that institute informs defendant and set an opportunity for sending documents and evidences.

2. Sending evidences: if disputes arose out of transactions which were taking the cyberspace, evidences can easily transfer electronically to arbitration institute or arbitrators, otherwise, evidences should be converted into electronic form. Due to only few arbitration institutes adopt send of evidences electronically, sometimes it encounters legal problems as well. If it is impossible to send evidences electronically, documents should be sent by mail. Sending documents to internet web site of arbitration institute is another method which is common in this stage. Even though using of this method has the less security than using of email, it makes the documents more ordered and makes their revision possible for a certain time. Other evidences such as legal oath and expert opinioncan be used by arbitrators in this stage.

While many codes recognized the validity of electronic evidences anddocuments,in some legal systems there are some limitations for evidences which are presented by the parties.This circumstance makes special educationsnecessary for arbitrators to enable them for extracting usable evidences from parties’ transactions. On the other hand, this may result in increasing costs anddecreasing in parties’ incentive for such arbitration.

3. Arbitration procedure: despite development of information technology which eliminated most of the obstacles and paved the way of online arbitration, arbitration procedure is still the most difficult part of this kind of arbitration. The first challenge which arbitrators face it is choosing of appropriate techs for this stage, because each available device has some advantages and limitations. Use of these techs become more intense when the parties or one of them lives in a countryin which such techs are less accessible, or because of different language and time-zone, using of some techs is impossible.

Use of the video-conference is the most common method in this field. By this device, not only parties can be heard and seen easily but also testimonies of witnesses can be taken. Moreover, this device is more secure than other tools. Nevertheless, interruption in transferring of sounds and pictures and disability in watching all manners of parties and witnesses because of differences in the accessibility of techs, and as what is said before, different language and time-zone, cause some problems with this device. Utilizing of email, chat rooms and word-processing software is common in the online arbitration as well, although everyone has some sort of limitations.

Another method which is suggested for solving techs problem is document-only arbitration. In addition to codes of some countries like England in which this kindof arbitration has been recognized, UNCITRAL Model Law has implied in 198530. It seems that using of this kind of arbitration makes circumstances in which taking a decision is very hard. Because not only deprives parties from citing their claim or appropriate defend but also it makes some kinds of evidences such as testimony and legal oath unprofitable. Therefore, this kind of arbitration cannot be a good solution for problems which is raised out of techs.

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