International Online Arbitration Court
An internet-based platform to resolve conflicts
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Legally binding - highly confidential - low cost- swift- border crossing- innovative
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A hypothetical example
Assumption: still 30 days to go till the football world championship starts. A TV set has been bought at an Internet shop; it has been paid and subsequently been delivered in Germany by the French salesperson. The TV set proves to be defective. A warranty has been refused by the Internet shop. Should the buyer plan go to an ordinary court the best thing for him to do is to buy a backup TV set or watch the World Championship at the bar next door. The court, chronically overloaded, will eventually decide but well after the end of the games. So far so bad.
How about an alternative? Suppose the buyer agrees with the vendor in an e-mail to let an International Online Arbitration Court decide the conflict. The dialogue incurred by the court procedure will exclusively happen from the PC; but confidentiality, legal binding character and documentation will be assured. The cost is low; the defense insurance will cover it. Finally: after about 3 weeks the legally binding arbitrage will be received, the world championship will take place at home, the Internet shop has delivered a new TV set.
Fancy? Not really.
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The Concept
The International Online Arbitration Court will transform all transactions of ordinary courts into a widely automated, secure, Internet-based reference court system. By the procedures of this court national as well as international conflicts will be resolved swiftly, low cost and legally
binding.
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Additionally and still less costly:
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The parties could playfully try to reach an agreement about the price demanded by issuing undisclosed online
bids. Within a defined timeframe the parties may come closer by an amount not known by the target
party.
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Mediation online would be another option. A well versed mediator will hear the parties and try to reach an amicable settlement by respective
suggestions.
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Gains
It may be expected that some specialized Online Arbitration Courts will develop based upon Sefirot's Reference Court System. The segments will differ widely: Internet shopping, banking, auto industry, assurance, tourism, domain- and logo conflicts, consumer law conflicts, etc. The advantage resulting: arbiters and mediators specialized in their respective segments will handle their cases swiftly and effectively. The customers will gain confidence w.r.t. their Internet legal posture an in companies that make use of International Online Arbitration Courts. Online Arbitration Courts in the US have shown economic success; thereby supporting the prognosis that similar courts can successfully be established in Europe.
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Ordinary courts are known to be loaded heavily; long waiting times, high court cost, huge problems with conflicts outside the country are prevailing - but can be avoided! All routine transactions will be automated as far as permitted, no mail delays, minimal office space and small personnel bills. The International Online Arbitration Court will thus unburden ordinary courts, will work quicker, more efficient and at less cost and has superior performance because of the identical decision enforcement power. Better still: Conflict resolution will cross borders and is location independent.
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Providing confidential, legally unchallenged exchanges in otherwise open nets will fulfill one of the basic prerequisites for high performance Online Courts. Each Online Arbitration Court will create new markets for trust center service providers, Smart Card and card reader manufacturers as well as for developers of high quality security products. A glimpse at America suffices to recognize that new quantity markets in this segment may be
expected.
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Technology
The corner stones of the International Online Arbitration Court system are developments by Sefirot, a generic workflow system (Java / XML based component framework) combined with a highly adaptive security architecture. A whole collection of interoperable IT products and services is part of the security architecture: products for legally binding electronic signatures, verification- and crypto modules, secure mail, certificate- and voucher services, a Smart Card logon module, SW for financial transaction services.
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A peculiar feature of the generic system: the generic workflow and the security architecture are intrinsically combined such that very powerful PKI-based workflow systems can be conceived and developed within shortest possible time frames.
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The customer domain has received exceptional attention during the design phase: Sefirot has developed tools for the customer domain by which workflow processes, procedural sequences and transactions may be described most precisely. Thus a segment-oriented online court, its characteristic workflow, may be described exhaustively and acc. to the
customers' requirements.
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Administration and economy organizations, often in need of legally unchallenged and secure data handling while using the Internet, may also benefit from the above compiling
tool.
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Proper care has been taken of the juridical confirmation of the online court procedures, data and legal security will all- pervasively be
preserved.
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The International Online Arbitration Court will thus become a best practice example for modern security applications in the Internet juridical
context.
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Legal Background
The legal fundamentals of an International Online Arbitration Court have been created only recently by the European lawmakers. A European signature regulation has been issued for EU members (1999/93/EG); the member countries have accordingly produced common signature rules and additional law for the employment of qualified electronic signatures. These additional acts cover the legally binding as well as evidence supporting quality of electronic signatures, e.g. for concluding electronic arbitration
agreements.
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