One example involves a virtual retail shopping mall on the Internet. Various vendors and finance houses had come together to interact with customers on a multi-dimensional website run by our client operator . The website used a multitude of computer servers located in various jurisdictions.
Electronic commerce means commercial transactions conducted over electronic networks.
On the contractual side, E-commerce has been around for some time, but the Internet has expanded the networks into a virtual global market place. The borderless nature of this global market gives rise to potential conflict of laws between national markets whose legal jurisdictions are otherwise segregated by traditional, physical borders. A crucial factual point was to identify a server which actioned acceptance by a vendor or, eg, a related finance provider. Alternatively, we needed to identify a server which sent the message of acceptance from a customer, and then the extent to which the operator of this server had been entrusted with this role. This last point could be affected by whether the server operated automatically or whether it interacted with the customer, requiring a confirmatory instruction for acceptance to be transmitted.