Exercise 6
Old Wine into New Bottles: Electronic Commerce Meets Commercial Pragmatism
HAL 9000 lives! You know HAL as the HCIC [head computer in charge] in 2001:A Space Odyssey or its more gentle counterpart--the computer on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. The advances in computer technology do not make the following scenario altogether fiction in electronic commerce:
A buyer accesses an autonomous computer controlled by a seller (a pukaberry merchant) and asks the price of pukaberries. The buyer has never had any dealings with the seller or the seller's computer before. Having checked that there are pukaberries in stock, the computer uses knowledge that it has acquired itself to calculate a price by means of a complex formula that it has evolved for itself. The computer then notifies the buyer of the price at which it is prepared to sell the pukaberries. The buyer responds by ordering a quantity of pukaberries from the computer at the price quoted. The computer informs the buyer that it accepts his order and then causes the pukaberries to be dispatched to the buyer and an appropriate debit to be made from his bank account. The seller never knows that this transaction has occurred. Does the transaction constitute a valid contract? If so, between whom?
Read GigaLaw text pages 287-296.
Also read Can Computers Make Contracts? (http://www.dur.ac.uk/Law/centre/hjolt.html)
In the scenario above, the authors argue that indeed both American and English law could confer legal status on all compter-generated contracts if each legal system revised its doctrinal position about what in particular?
Send me an e-mail with your reasoned response (200-300 words).
Send to:ajbolla@gmail.com This is the e-mail I use to receive your work product.
Use "subject" line: ilaw2contract
Include your personal identification information in any answer you "attach" to e-mail, otherewise you may not get full credit for your answer.