Archives: July 2006
Sun Jul 23, 2006
International ODR/E-government Research Group
I am preparing a proposal concerning an International ODR/E-government Research Group in response to the call for proposals at http://www.ctg.albany.edu/projects/dgi/cfp.pdf If you are interested in participating, please let me know fairly soon < katsh at legal.umass.edu > The call for proposals has a variety of constraints in that the U.S. National Science Foundation will not pay any expenses for non-U.S. participants. Indeed, anyone from outside the U.S. would have to obtain a letter indicating that some entity would provide travel funds. On the U.S. side, travel funds would be provided but no funds for research. In other words, if you are interested in research that involves ODR in connection with some government activity, please read the call for proposals carefully before you contact me. I should note that Ph.D. students are particularly welcome but the same contraints would apply.
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Tue Jul 18, 2006
Maybe We Should Leave That up to the Computer?
NYTimes, July 18, 2006
Maybe We Should Leave That Up to the Computer
By DOUGLAS HEINGARTNER
AMSTERDAM — Do you think your high-paid managers really know best? A Dutch sociology professor has doubts.
The professor, Chris Snijders of the Eindhoven University of Technology, has been studying the routine decisions that managers make, and is convinced that computer models, by and large, can do a better job of it. He even issued a challenge late last year to any company willing to pit its humans against his algorithms.
“As long as you have some history and some quantifiable data from past experiences,” Mr. Snijders claims, a simple formula will soon outperform a professional’s decision-making skills. “It’s not just pie in the sky,” he said. “I have the data to support this.”
More...
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Mon Jul 17, 2006
New Podcast on Online Dispute Resolution
Yesterday I was lucky enough to get interviewed for a radio program at Stanford University called Hearsay Culture, which focuses on law and technology issues. The host, David Levine, is a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, and he asked a lot of smart and thoughtful questions. We focused our conversation on the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and how dispute resolution works most effectively on the Internet, and particularly at eBay.
If you’re interested in hearing a couple law-and-ADR geeks chat about the state of the art in resolving disputes online, focusing on eBay as the primary example, you might want to check it out. The podcast is available here. (It's available on iTunes as well.) It's covered by a Creative Commons CC-Attribution 2.5 license (see this link for more.)
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Fri Jul 14, 2006
New UNITAR Book has ODR Chapters
A new online book by Ambassador Ahmad Kamal, The Law of Cyber-Space, is published on the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) site. It contains chapters relevant to ODR practitioners on distance contracting, digital signatures, civil remedies, and dispute resolution. Each chapter contains a statement of the legal problems, an analysis of existing legal texts from several nation-states or multinational organizations, and suggested solutions.
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Thu Jul 13, 2006
New issue of Artificial Intelligence and Law focused on ODR
The latest issue of Artificial Intelligence and Law has some great articles on ODR, including:
Developing Negotiation Decision Support Systems that Support Mediators: A Case Study of the Family_Winner System, by Emilia Bellucci and John Zeleznikow
The appropriate role of dispute resolution in building trust online, by Colin Rule and Larry Friedberg
Persuasion Dialogue in Online Dispute Resolution, by Douglas Walton and David M. Godden
Legitimacy and the Virtualization of Dispute Resolution, by Laurens Mommers
You can review the final articles as they come in online here.
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Tue Jul 11, 2006
New book on IT and arbitration
Please allow me to let myself go the occasional burst of self-promotion--my new book has just come out and it makes me happy:
Thomas Schultz, Information Technology and Arbitration - A Practitioner's Guide, Kluwer Law International, 2006.
It even has pictures inside, and here and there a nice little story! Read it and learn about how Chernobyl, spacecrafts and former Secretary of State Colin Powell might teach us about technology in dispute resolution.
One of the main ODR-related arguments it tries to make is that ODR is increasingly being combined with more traditional forms of dispute resolution (and, in this case, arbitration), to form the expectable continuum ranging from completely online procedures to completely offline procedures, with many, many steps in between. And that the resulting mix is already being used for multi-million disputes.
Another ODR-related argument it tries to get across, which I strongly believe in, is that the procedural development of ODR is no longer about fancier technology, but about how to use it correctly.
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Mon Jul 03, 2006
New ODR articles
The journal Information & Communications Technology Law has just released its vol. 15 of June 2006. This special issue on "Virtualization of dispute resolution" contains:
Foreword p. 125
Laurens Mommers, Arno R. Lodder
The possibility of online mediation under the Hungarian Mediation Act—In comparison with a number of international, including European, documents on mediation p. 129
Gergely László Szőke
The Third Party and Beyond. An analysis of the different parties, in particular The Fifth, involved in online dispute resolution p. 143
Arno R. Lodder
Taking the Fourth Party further? Considering a shared virtual workspace for arbitration p. 157
Dimitris Protopsaltou, Thomas Schultz, Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann
Virtualization of dispute resolution. Establishing trust by recycling reputation p. 175
Laurens Mommers
Doing justice with information technology p. 189
Dory Reiling
Bailiffs on the e-highway p. 201
D. Struiksma, A. W. Jongbloed
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Sun Jul 02, 2006
Washington Post: "Self-Defense For EBay Buyers"
Avoiding Unpleasant Surprises On World's Biggest Auction Site
By Kathleen Day
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 2, 2006; Page F01
'"While eBay officials say the vast majority of transactions take place without a hitch, company spokesmen acknowledge that the growth in online buying has been accompanied by a growth in online disputes, from simple disagreements over a sweater's color to more serious allegations. And, says eBay spokeswoman Catherine England, fraud also occurs against sellers, when buyers don't pay up as agreed.
Cracking down on such problems has been a hot topic at the annual "eBay Live!" gatherings of buyers, sellers and company executives. This year's, in Las Vegas in June, was no exception: EBay president and chief executive Meg Whitman in her keynote speech ticked off a number of improvements in eBay's online dispute-resolution process.
"We're confident that is going to result in a significant reduction in buyer claims against sellers, which will be great for everyone in the eBay family," she said...'
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