We were going to run the Excite takeover story, not because it was the biggest news of the week, but because we were going to call it “@Home Get Excited”. Instead, we guess you’ve already read about it somewhere else and we’ve found something on the future of e-commerce which is much more mind-enriching we think.

The focus is shifting now from technology to policy,” said Steve Case, AOL’s chief executive. “This is reflective of the Internet coming of age.” This quote, from a News.com article dated January 14, reflects the pendency of an expected explosion in Internet use in general and electronic commerce

in particular, and its attendant repercussions.

Major players from several countries are joining together in efforts to create consistent electronic commerce policy “around the world,” in hopes of avoiding disparate government regulation. They met last week in New York to form the Global Business Dialogue on E-Commerce, according to the article. Internet transactions amounted to $8 billion last year, and are expected to grow to $108 billion by 2003, according to one participant quoted.

Governments, however, are not being shy about getting into the act. Last month, the state of Virginia, which sees itself as the birthplace of the Internet, unveiled a new Internet policy, making Virginia the first state to attempt to protect Net consumers and promote Net growth. The proposed Virginia Internet Policy Act contains policy and legislative proposals on privacy protection, encryption, junk e-mail, content regulation, and taxation. The Act may be introduced in the Virginia General Assembly this month. From the opening paragraph:

Our goal is to enable Virginia to draft and implement the first comprehensive state Internet legislation anywhere in the Nation. Several states, most notably California, have addressed various Internet issues, but none has addressed all of the critical issues in a comprehensive, coordinated fashion. The Internet &£45;- which all agree is revolutionizing the way we live work and play &£45;- is global, national and local all at once. The importance of a sound local (state) Internet policy thus can not be underestimated. [emphasis in original]

Even with its current distraction over impeachment of the president, the U.S. Congress is active. On January 6, the Consumer Internet Privacy Protection Act of 1999 was introduced in the House. The bill seeks to regulate the use by interactive computer services of personally identifiable information provided by subscribers to such services. Perhaps most importantly, the Global Business Dialogue on E-Commerce appears to be forming in response to a broad directive on Internet regulation that is currently before the European Union. A recently passed Privacy Directive in the EU prohibits companies from sharing or selling a European citizen’s personal data without permission. The Directive also prohibits the transfer of data to countries with less stringent laws.

See, much better.

(c) c|net