Begining of the Conference
　 -Copyright Infringement

Start-Up(8)Takashi Tanemura
I feel the post office or the convenience store system aren't totally bad. I guess the only problem is that the merchant have to send the goods to the consumers first and take the risk. But in Japan, this system works and the merchants are happy with it.

I share this observation. Is this peculiar to Japan? Or can this be found elsewhere too? Let me ask friends outside of Japan. Are there notable examples of post-delivery payment (such as cash-on-demand) based electronic commerce outside of Japan?

It should be noted that many forms of non-credit card settlement assumes the existence of strong trust in the society. You have to trust the customers in order to send products before you receive guarantees for the payment. Likewise, customers have to trust the sellers to send money before receiving the products. (see footnote)

If the buyers can trust the sellers, the use of internet banking (wire transfer) becomes an alternative. I started using a Japanese Bank's services, and the fee for the remittance can be as low as \105. If the credit card fee is 7%, the breakeven is \1500. It seems to become increasingly competitive for higher priced items.

Of course, a major difference exists in that the bank wiring fees are paid by the buyers instead of sellers. This makes the vehicle attractive for the sellers but not for the buyers. We may find stronger market for internet banking services in Japan than elsewhere if the current high cost structure remains on the credit card side...

footnote:
The EC processes using postal GIRO, bank wiring, or convenience store payment can be categorized into post- and pre- delivery payments. Pre-delivery payment refers to buyers wiring the fund first, and sellers dispatching delivery after receiving the fund. One of my student's research indicates that post- is often used for food and cosmetics, all others predominantly use pre-.

(2)Jiro Kokuryo
We may find stronger market for internet banking services in Japan than　elsewhere if the current high cost structure remains on the credit card　side...

In my opinion the credit card is the electronic transaction tool of choice for Internet commerce. It is a transaction vehicle that is well understood by consumers and used by most. What can this list and forum do to encourage reasonable credit card percetage rates in Japan?

All of us on this list appear to be holding the same opinions and it is nice to be in the same company with all of you. But, I must ask, what can we do? Am I correct in saying that Sumitomo Visa has a Monopoly on VISA in Japan? If that is true, then shouldn't we petition the Japanese governement to break the monopoly and promote competition for credit card merchant clearance business?

The Gentleman from England said rates for credit card clearance are as low as 1.5% (sorry I lost the message so I may be wrong on the number) But I know it is a HUGE difference. What actions can this group take prior to the March 12th event to make a difference? I am mad as hell and I probably won't take it any more :-)

We have been approached by many companies who have either established Web sites or are planning to do so but have then been confronted with the issue of how the orders can be fulfilled. This is especially difficult when the orders are from different countries. This is causing many enterprises to look at how they organise their distribution models and indeed how they organise themselves to deal with these issues.

It is clear that government has a role to play in trying to remove some of the barriers to this kind of business otherwise companies will simply move their virtual operations to more favorable tax regimes. We have also observed that eCommerce is definitely evolving very differently in Europe and Asia compared to the US as the requests we are getting from companies in these areas seem to be very different.

As an example business to business is of more interest in Europe possibly in order to streamline processes to compete with lower cost economies. The US still seems to be focussed on business to consumer. Asia seems to be drawing from both models depending on the country. Does anyone else have similar experiences???

If an user uses a Cupcake, the user can determine which information they want to make available to the websites. Since Nikkei does not use a Cookie because of the privacy issue, we were keeping a close eye on the Cupcakes to gather information on our users. Does anybody know why this technology didn't pan out?

I thought it would be timely to ask whether the European Union hasn't effectively "shot its Internet and computer systems development in the foot" by apparently taking a position on copyright infringement that is so extreme as to explicitly prohibit all forms of caching. As most of us know, caching is effected transparently in the course of almost all transmission and processing functions.

Indeed, it is not apparent how most current systems could function effectively without many different forms of caching at different points. Of particular concern, will be any attempts to "export" such an extreme position and enforce it elsewhere in the world. This seems like a global question worthy of discussion and consideration.

(6)A.M. Rutkowski
I thought it would be timely to ask whether the European Union hasn't effectively "shot its Internet and computer systems development in the foot" by apparently taking a position on copyright infringement that is so extreme as to explicitly prohibit all forms of caching.

As a newspaper company, Nikkei is very sensitive to copyright issues. But if we are going to provide information on the Internet, we cannot restrict everything. I haven't heard about the European situation and I was very surprised to see Mr. Rutkowski's post, but I wonder how it is done technically to prohibit all forms of caching.

Our site, NIKKEI NET, is said to be losing pageviews because some big companies cache our service and provide it on their Intranet. This is huge for us since our site is advertising-driven and this means a loss in revenue. But we cannot complain loudly about this because this is what Internet is all about. All we can say is that if companies are caching our site for their internal use, we will have to freshen our site frequently and make them come to our site for the newest information.

As a company, Nikkei would prefer the European decision, but as one consumer, I would like to have the freedom on the Internet. Isn't freedom the reason that the Internet business in the US is growing at such a tremendous pace?

(17)Takashi Tanemura
Our site, NIKKEI NET, is said to be losing pageviews because some big companies cache our service and provide it on their Intranet. This is huge for us since our site is advertising-driven and this means a loss in revenue. But we cannot complain loudly about this because this is what Internet is all about. All we can say is that if companies are caching our site for their internal use, we will have to freshen our site frequently andmake them come to our site for the newest information.

One can understand the legitimate concern of newspapers vis-a-vis webcachning for Intranet diffusion. Hiwever, in expressing his concern, Mr Tanemura also provides elements of answers:

1. Advertisers need to be aware of 'internal circulation', i.e. the number of readers not detected through 'external hit counts' (much in the same fashion that they already assess 'effective readership' when a magazine is read by several family members, or when a company subscribes to a newspaper and circulates it to its staff, sometimes through 'press reviews' for example); the advantage of 'Intranet circulation through web caching' over 'internal press reviews' is that nobody will cut out the advertizing before xeroxing articles ..:-)

2. Mr Tanemura's indication that caching will encourage newspapers (and others) to update their sites more frequently is indeed a very intelligent response, and reflects well the overall philosophy of the Internet, in which winners have often been those who could move and adat faster than others. Those who request government protection are seldom the best of innovators. This, at least, has been our experience through the Global Trade Point Network ....

(17)Takashi Tanemura
As a company, Nikkei would prefer the European decision, but as one consumer, I would like to have the freedom on the Internet. Isn't freedom the reason that the Internet business in the US is growing at such a tremendous pace?

I think Mr. Lanvin(8) raises many good responsive considerations. I'd like to raise a significant operational-performance consideration as well. Indeed, there is some amusing dialogue on the subject at the dot-slash information site.

Caching occurs in all electronic information systems today. It occurs everywhere from video cards and processors, to local PC browser hard drives caches, to various locations throughout the network infrastructure. The overall caching architecture is to a large extent self-organizing to mirror usage patterns. One cannot simply ban caching with the wave of a hand or stroke of a pen in a parliament -- without effectively making use of the entire electronic infrastructure unlawful. It is an absurd result that colaterally diminishes the stature of the law.

There are some steps being taken by the caching industry to deal with the problem areas - such as reporting back remote usage of cached works for auditing purposes, or tagging pages to denominate intellectual property status and constraints. Dealing with these matters at this level of granularity seems better matched to balance of interests that must be maintained.

(9)A.M. Rutkowski
One cannot simply ban caching with the wave of a hand or stroke of a pen in a parliament -- without effectively making use of the entire electronic infrastructure unlawful. It is an absurd result that colaterally diminishes the stature of the law.