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PLEASE AMEND YOUR HOTLINKS TO www.rogerclarke.com (previously www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke).
Version of 31 August 2010
Note the
Additional
Required and Further Reading
© Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 2000-2010
Available under an AEShareNet
licence or a Creative
Commons
licence.
This document is at http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/ETIntro.html
In this six-hour segment, I'll address the trading of goods and services, including the concepts and processes involved in markets, important technologies required to support markets, and a couple of currently important issues in electronic trading. The topics are as follows:
1. Markets
When trading occurs, whether good, old-fashioned, physical trading or facilitated by electronic tools, it involves 'markets', 'tradable items', trading partners, relationships among them, various ways of 'doing the deal', and business processes to support the activity. Without an understanding of these concepts, eTrading designs can be confidently predicted to be disastrous failures.
2. Technologies Underlying eTrading
eTrading utilises available information infrastructure. Several aspects of I.T. are still failing to deliver, a half-century after computers were first applied to business. This session provides an overview of two key technology topics. The rapid migration towards mobile commerce is one aspect. The other is the diverse forms of malware, which represent a complex and increasingly sophisticated challenge.
A great deal of trading involves one party delivering funds to the other, and one kind - currency trading - involves both parties doing so. Because of the enormous diversity of circumstances in which payments are made, a wide range of payment mechanisms have been used, and many continue to be used. Electronic payments have been made since 1870, the expression 'telegraphic transfer' (TT) is still in use. The era of closed networks spawned new forms (SWIFT, ETFPOS), the Internet era still more (CNP credit-card transactions, Digicash). A new round of payment schemes based on contactless chips is currently under way, with implications for eTrading.
The effectiveness of a trading scheme depends on trust by participants in one another's behaviour, and in the infrastructure supporting the activity. Identification (of parties and of tradable items) is one factor. Developing confidence in the assertions that parties make, referred to as 'authentication', is crucial. Biometric technologies have potential benefits, but bring with them significant risks. The roles of anonymity and pseudonymity also need to be understood.
5. eTrading in Digital Objects, incl. P2P
eTrading in music has been a battleground for over a decade, and the large 'music labels' are only just beginning to come to terms with the changes wrought by digitisation. This session delivers the essentials of the legal framework within which music (and other digital objects) are bought and sold - copyright. An overview of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technologies enables a discussion of the sharing and trading of digital objects.
Most scientists believe that we're in a phase of 'global warming', and that an important reason for it is our emissions of 'greenhouse gases'. Economists argue that 'emissions trading schemes' will solve the world's problem. Any such scheme will inevitably be an eTrading scheme. How does the information contained in the previous 4 sessions help us design infrastructure to support eTrading in carbon?
The fundamental concept is 'market'. The elements of marketplaces and marketspaces are explained, and an outline is provided of the processes whereby trading occurs. Many different kinds of market exist, and more are being dreamt up. Which form is appropriate depends on a number of factors:
With the maturation of electronic trading, it appears likely that a larger proportion of contracts may be effected by means of auctions. This term refers to a number of somewhat different, formalised processes whereby prices are set for the exchange of goods or services.
Several important technologies underlying eTrading are discussed. The parallel explosions in mobile devices and wireless connectivity are creating new challenges; and Baby Boomers, Gen-X, Gen-Y and iGens use them differently. The security of transactions, especially the payment aspects of transactions, are badly undermined by malware.
An area of continual challenge is payment mechanisms. It would seem to be simple to establish a made-for-the-Internet scheme; but multiple attempts have come and gone and we're still using inherently insecure arrangements based on credit-cards. But a new round of change us under way.
There's a widespread presumption that, in cyberspace moreso than in meatspace, you need to know who you're doing business with. To test the prevailing presumptions about identities in marketspaces, it's necessary to study the concepts of identification, of anonymity and pseudonymity, and of authentication, and the technologies that both support and threaten consumers' interests.
Purely digital goods are a big part of the economy, and the impact of eTrading has been both large and threatening to powerful corporations. Client-server architectures have been complemented by peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies. Old and new notions of copyright are discussed, in the context of easy and cheap replication and reticulation of digital works.
The examinable material comprises the following:
The Further Reading is not examinable. It's provided in order to enable you to 'drill down' on topics you're particularly interested in.
Mon 30 August, 14:00-15:00, CHEM T1 - (Slides in 6-up PDF)
Sub-Topics and Required Readings:
All readings are quite short sections, so (although the list seems long) it won't take you much time to get the readings done
Mon 30 August, 15:00-16:00, CHEM T1 - (Slides in 6-up PDF)
Sub-Topics and Required Readings:
Tue 31 August, 12:00-13:00, PSYC G8
(Slides
in 6-up PDF)
Sub-Topics and Required Readings:
Mon 5 September, 14:00-15:00, CHEM T1 - (Slides in 6-up PDF)
Sub-Topics and Required Readings:
Mon 6 September, 15:00-16:00, CHEM T1 - (Slides in 6-up PDF)
Sub-Topics and Required Readings:
Tue 7 September, 12:00-13:00, PSYC G8
(Slides
in 6-up PDF)
Sub-Topics and Required Readings:
Roger Clarke is Principal of Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra. He is also a Visiting Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Australian National University,, and in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre at the University of N.S.W.
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The content and infrastructure for these community service pages are provided by Roger Clarke through his consultancy company, Xamax. From the site's beginnings in August 1994 until February 2009, the infrastructure was provided by the Australian National University. During that time, the site accumulated close to 30 million hits. Sponsored by Bunhybee Grasslands and the extended Clarke Family |
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Created: 19 March 2000 - Last Amended: 31 August 2010 by Roger Clarke - Site Last Verified: 15 February 2009
This document is at www.rogerclarke.com/EC/ETIntro.html
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