The Business Internet and Intranets:

• The Internet is global. Because the Internet has no territorial limits, questions arise about how, where, and when individual countries' rules will be applied to it.
  
  
• The Internet lacks a central location or head office. Regulations become more difficult to enforce when the entity on which they are to be enforced is both pervasive and protean.
  
  
• The Internet is electronic. Internet transactions do not generate the paper trails that have developed over the years as legally binding. What legal standing will electronic documents have?
  
  
• The Internet is digital. Perfect copies of images, documents, software, and so on can be made almost instantaneously in limitless numbers, at little or no cost. How can copyrights be protected?

Internet law analysts Debora Spar end Jeffrey Bussgang have stated that "commerce will migrate to areas where rules will prevail and responsibility can be assigned. ³⁸ Several necessary rules must be put in place for and by specific electronic commerce communities. The most likely scenario for this will be that users will choose rather than legislators impose.

In October 1996, two consortiums were formed to help address the Internet's "no rules" state: the Internet Law and Policy Forum and TRUSTe. The Internet Law and Policy Forum (ILPF), composed of a number of international companies involved in Internet development, proposes to help resolve the challenging legal issues and policy questions arising with the increase of business activity on the global electronic network. The ILPF will endeavor, through analytical reports and recommendations for best business practices, to produce the building blocks for more predictable and enforceable agreements, uniform contracting tools for electronic commerce, and model codes of conduct. Two important areas of focus have been isolated by the ILPF's sponsors as the site of initial efforts:first, business and legal aspects of the emerging functions of certification authorities, and second, the challenges of blocking access to unacceptable materials.

The TRUSTe initiative strives to increase the level of trust in electronic communications, especially on the Internet, held by merchants and consumers. The TRUSTe was founded on the belief that "the greater the level of trust among the participants in a transaction, the lower the transaction costs."

The key principles governing the TRUSTe program include the following:

• Informed consent. Consumers have the right to be informed about the privacy and security consequences of an online transaction before entering into it.
  
  
• No privacy without appropriate security. An inextricable link exists between the privacy and security of an online transaction. Privacy is impossible without appropriate security.
  
  
• Privacy standards vary according to use context. No single privacy standard is adequate for all situations. Three levels of privacy for commercial transactions have been delineated, each of which is, in its context, considered a "best business practice."

The TRUSTe consortium has joined its efforts to those of CommerceNet, thus commercializing the project and reaching many companies already involved in developing electronic commerce best practices. A pilot launched in November 1996 focused solely on privacy issues: creating a reasonable, effective, and enforceable system for ensuring protection of personally identifiable information. It included a contractual agreement that details the rights and responsibilities of a site, specifies the guidelines a site must follow, and licenses TRUSTe servicemarks for use on pilot member sites.