When laying the foundation for buying and selling on the Net, should government regulation or industry self-regulation serve as the concrete base for electronic commerce?
Wrong question, according to a panel at the Cyberspace and the American Dream VII conference in Aspen. Panelists say the rapidly evolving Internet calls for a bit of cement, a dose of rebar, and some artistic flair for good measure.
"We think it's all about the right mix," said European Union executive Gerard deGraaf. "You have to look at it issue by issue."
The panel, moderated by former White House technology czar Ira Magaziner, spoke on "Creating a Framework for Global Electronic Commerce." Whether to have a regulatory framework or not sparked the most animated discussion.
Taxation on the Net, privacy and consumer protection, intellectual property rights, and legal liability issues will call for differing self-regulatory and government regulatory models, panel members said.
"The challenge there is to reconcile two approaches: regulatory and self-regulation, to find interfaces [for them to] coexist," deGraaf said.
The key, he said, is that for some issues there is clearly a government role, for other issues there is more of an industry role.
The Aspen Summit is staged annually by the libertarian Progress & Freedom Foundation, which examines the digital era's implications for public policy.
In 1995, the foundation published a major study on the need to replace the Federal Communications Commission and substantially deregulate the telecommunications marketplace. A new study is now underway by the group to identify public policies that would limit government interference in the market for digital broadband networks.
DeGraaf's European Union has differed radically from the United States on self-regulation when it comes to such key issues as electronic privacy and consumer protection.
But his theme of applying the appropriate government or industry self-regulation on an individual basis was largely echoed in the statements of panel members here.
"I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer to this question," added Technology Network president Roberta Katz.
Business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions might call for different types of oversight frameworks, Katz said.
