Communiqué issued by the United States of America and Ireland on Electronic Commerce

Global electronic commerce will be an engine of economic growth in the 21st century, with the potential to invigorate economies by enhancing productivity, streamlining distribution, and revamping corporate structures.

Electronic commerce will improve the standard of living of citizens in the United States and Ireland, as well as the rest of the globe, by creating new, high-paying jobs and opportunities. Small and medium-sized enterprises, in particular, will benefit from new opportunities to sell their products to a world-wide market.

It is recognised that the liberalisation of the telecommunications markets plays a key role in the development of electronic commerce.

The Governments of the United States and Ireland recognise the importance of global co-operation in the promotion of electronic commerce and the need to reach coherent and effective global solutions in the construction of a seamless environment for electronic commerce and, in this respect, welcome the opportunity of building on the principles and guidelines agreed in the US-EU Joint Statement on Electronic Commerce and, in particular, would emphasise:

  • the key role of industry in developing electronic commerce through the development of new services and by helping to set rules for the functioning of this market-place;

  • that the role of government is to provide a clear, consistent and predictable legal framework, to promote a pro-competitive environment in which electronic commerce can flourish and to ensure adequate protection of public interest objectives such as privacy, intellectual property rights, prevention of fraud, consumer protection, and public safety;

  • that unnecessary legal and regulatory barriers should be eliminated and the emergence of new ones should be prevented. Where legislative action is deemed necessary, it should not be to the advantage or disadvantage of electronic commerce compared with other forms of commerce;

  • that taxes on electronic commerce should be clear, consistent, neutral and non-discriminatory; that there should be close co-operation and mutual assistance to ensure effective tax administration and to combat and prevent illegal activities on the Internet;

  • the strong desirability of continuing the current practice of not imposing customs duties on electronic transactions; and

  • that it is important to enhance the awareness and confidence of citizens and SME's in electronic commerce and to support the development of relevant skills and network literacy.

    The United States and Ireland support and endorse the following fundamental principles which should guide the development of electronic commerce which should be essentially market-led and driven by private initiative:

    1. Authentication/Electronic Signatures: Governments should support a global uniform commercial legal framework that recognises, facilitates, and enforces electronic transactions world-wide. A wide variety of authentication methods and technologies are developing rapidly. With respect to authentication and electronic signatures, efforts of the private sector in constructing rules and guidelines should be encouraged.

    The commercial legal framework should conform with the following principles:

  • the acceptability of electronic signatures for legal and commercial purposes;
  • the propriety and desirability of allowing parties to a transaction to determine the appropriate technological and business methods of authentication for their transaction; and
  • the fostering of mutual cross-border recognition of electronic authentication methods and a non-discriminatory approach to electronic signatures from other countries as a necessary step in the removal of artificial barriers to cross-border commercial transactions

    2. Privacy: Ensuring effective protection of privacy with regard to the processing of personal data on global information networks is necessary.

    3. Combating Illegal Use and Content: We encourage international co-operation between law enforcement authorities as a means of combating and preventing illegal activities on the Internet and the exploitation and illegal use of electronic commerce by criminal and terrorist organisations.

    Industry, through self-regulation, should establish effective measures to counter the proliferation of illegal content on the Internet.

    4. Access Issues: In instances where users, such as parents, do not wish to receive certain types of content, industry should be encouraged to make available filtering or blocking systems or other tools, as appropriate. Industry should also be encouraged to develop content-rating systems to improve the effectiveness of filtering tools.

    Governments should not prevent their citizens from accessing information simply because it is posted in another country or in a foreign language. Furthermore, governments can use information technology to become more open, responsive, efficient and accessible to the public.

    5. Electronic Payments: Market-driven developments in this area should be encouraged.

    6. Intellectual Property Rights: Growth of electronic commerce depends on the adequate protection of intellectual property rights, which will be assisted by ratification and implementation, as soon as possible, of the W.I.P.O. Copyright Treaty and the W.I.P.O. Performances and Phonograms Treaty.

    7. Domain Name System: In order to reach its full potential, the system for registering, allocating and governing Internet domain names should be global and market-based and reflect the geographically and functionally diverse nature of the Internet.

    8. Consumer Protection: Electronic commerce should provide at least the same level of protection as in other forms of commerce.

    9. Taxes: We will actively participate in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development work toward developing framework conditions for the taxation of Electronic Commerce. Close co-operation and mutual assistance are necessary to ensure effective tax administration and to prevent tax evasion on the Internet.

    In the furtherance of the principles set out in this statement, the United States and Ireland shall seek to encourage:

  • closer co-operation between the two countries for promoting electronic commerce and to build on the strong US-industry presence in Ireland and the growing base of Irish companies in the United States as a means of developing our mutual interests in this area;
  • further bilateral discussions at expert level, where appropriate, regarding the development of global electronic commerce;
  • dialogue and co-operation among the market participants in both countries, since the market should lead in the development of electronic commerce;
  • close co-operation with a view to encouraging the development of statistical data on electronic commerce; and,
  • enhanced co-operation within relevant international fora to achieve global consensus on an international framework for electronic commerce.

    Issued at Dublin - September, 1998

    Taoiseach Bertie Ahern TD
    Digital Signature
    03 81 81 00 32 fd d1 1c b2 c8 91 0a 31 52 ed b3 e3 c0 46 20 d4
    64 94 85 b1 20 25 25 77 2b cd 83 59 06 ae 08 71 93 48 27 81
    d0 18 25 0e 56 68 1f 36 29 c2 c1 6d f1 d6 9d 62 d7 fb 55 45
    18 67 33 01 30 5c f7 aa 1b 92 8d 40 8d a3 16 90 a3 16 4b 89
    53 a1 d7 7b a7 e6 ff 52 af 9e 5f 59 35 81 91 f3 c2 65 45 35
    01 93 86 0b 91 c0 96 f9 c1 b4 a9 26 8c e7 95 51 b5 85 d0 29
    de af 51 9e fb 31 de a5 8e 49 d1
    		President William J Clinton
    Digital Signature
    03 81 81 00 6b c9 f7 c7 da 20 b1 06 96 2d 77 09 88 96 88 0c 36
    23 8f 27 66 22 07 6e a8 5e 07 f5 36 4c 3b fd 3f 86 5b 0f 7c
    f4 16 c0 d6 52 d7 32 56 ad 42 3e 13 49 46 23 20 4e 6e c1 eb
    01 1b 00 31 68 da a4 9b f6 8c b5 5e fe c8 18 3d 97 8a f1 8d
    09 ed d0 96 12 1e 2a 23 e1 7d de 0e ab 88 d2 3b bf 79 43 98
    18 1b 6f 6d 2b 38 65 e4 b1 c8 98 72 42 20 51 82 ff 44 28 ca
    61 02 9e de 02 bf 17 65 67 d2 a3

     

    The joint communiqué on E-Commerce was digitally signed using the RSA digital signature algorithm. 1024-bit RSA keys were pre-generated on the smartcards used by the Taoiseach and the President. Digital Certificates were also issued to the Taoiseach and the President by UniCERT, Baltimore’s advanced, scaleable Certification Authority. The Digital Certificates were written to the smartcards to be stored along with the RSA keys.

    During the signing ceremony a message digest of the joint communiqué was prepared using Baltimore’s Crypto Systems Toolkit implementation of the SHA-1 hashing algorithm. PKCS#11 compliant function calls were used to transfer the message digest to the smartcard for signing. The digital signatures were then returned to the host computer and appended to the communiqué.