E-commerce Bill due in Parliament

Johannesburg, 15 Feb 2002

The Electronic Communications and Transaction (ECT) Bill is to be presented to Parliament by next week and will soon be available for public scrutiny.

During a media briefing at Parliament yesterday, communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri announced that the long-awaited Bill is to be tabled "within the next day or two" and said the draft version would be "available on our Web site tomorrow". By the time of publication, the Bill was not yet available at the central government Web site, the site of the Department of Communications or at the site that hosted the policy debate around the Bill.

The Bill is to be the conclusion of a long process which saw the discussion Green Paper on E-commerce published in November 2000.

Among the provisions in the Bill is the legal recognition of electronic signatures and contracts in a digital form, definitions of cyber crimes such as hacking, and consumer protection guidelines for e-commerce transactions.

Some sections are expected to draw sharp criticism and challenge. The Bill seeks to establish a domain name authority which is to be completely government controlled and will enforce government policy in the .ZA name space. It also allows the minister to, by declaration, define any database as "critical" and to then exercise a great deal of control over its management.

These provisions are expected to feature prominently in the public comment process which is to follow.

Matsepe-Casaburri also announced that her department is preparing a Convergence Bill, which is to "cater for the convergence of broadcasting, telecommunications and information technologies". Sentech, the State-owned distributor of radio and television broadcast signals, is currently being licensed to operate an international telecommunications gateway.

No date has yet been set for the release of the first draft of the Bill.