PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH E-CONTRACTS

Problems Associated with E-Contracts

Problems Associated with E-Contracts

Introduction

Today with the recent advancement in the areas of computer technology, telecommunications technology, software and information technology have resulted in changing the standard of living of people in an unimaginable way. The communication is no more restricted due to the constraints of geography and time. Information is transmitted and received widely and more rapidly than ever before. And this is where the electronic commerce offers the flexibility to business environment in terms of place, time, space, distance, and payment (Bakshi & Suri, 2002, pp 33-282).

This e-commerce is associated with the buying and selling of information, products and services via computer networks. It is a means of transacting business electronically, usually, over the Internet. It is the tool that leads to 'enterprise integration'. With the growth of e-commerce, there is a rapid advancement in the use of e-contracts. But deployment of electronic contracts poses a lot of challenges at three levels, namely conceptual, logical and implementation. In our article we have discussed the scope, nature and legality and various other issues related to e-contracts.

Discussion

Traditional concept of contract provides the foundations to all types of valid and enforceable contract, keeping in view the meanings of definition of contract as, 'all agreements are contracts if they are made by the free assent of parties competent to contract, for a lawful consideration and with a lawful object and are not thereby expressly declared to be void' the term contract would include invitation to tender and instruction to renderers, 'tender, and acceptance thereof.

An electronic contract is an agreement created and "signed" in electronic form -- in other words, no paper or other hard copies are used (Chiu, Cheung and Till, 2003, pp 33-282).

For example, you write a contract on your computer and email it to a business associate, and the business associate emails it back with an electronic signature indicating acceptance. An e-contract can also be in the form of a "Click to Agree" contract, commonly used with downloaded software. The user clicks an "I Agree" button on a page containing the terms of the software license before the transaction can be completed (Karlapalem, Dani and Radha Krishna, 2001, pp. 193-207).

In India the concept of electronic commerce has paced up in the last decade. Nowadays the geographical as well as the constraints with respect to the time limit has very well been overcome by the increasing use of information technology amongst common people , the scenario present now is completely different to the one which was prevalent about a decade back when the use of information technology was restricted to select individuals and the conventional methods of entering into contracts were the sole methods for entering into a legal relationship(Mathias Sallé, 2002, pp. 349-353).

Meaning of electronic contract

E-contract is a contract modeled, specified, executed and deployed by a software system. Computer programs are used to automate business processes that govern e-contracts. E-contracts can be mapped to inter-related programs, which have to be specified carefully ...