InformationWeek

Clinton: Hands Off E-Commerce

By Clinton Wilder

resident Clinton will d eclare this week that private enterprise, not governments, must lead the world into global electronic commerce. He will advocate making the Internet an untaxed, duty-free zone for the buying and selling of digital products.

Clinton will issue a paper called "A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce" one week before European leaders meet in Bonn, Germany, to discuss European unification and economic issues. The paper's principal author, senior White House adviser Ira Magaziner, will attend the Bonn meeting along with Commerce Secretary William Daley and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. The trio is expected to push Clinton's vision of the Net as an unregulated venue for digital commerce.

"The president understands that no government in the world is organized to handle E-commerce, since the technology defies any government's ability to know everything that goes on," says James Johnson, deputy director of the Global Information Infrastructure Commission in Washington. Johnson, who spoke last week at the Giga Information Group Business Online Conference in San Francisco, heads the U.S. delegation to the G7 E-commerce policy group.

Clinton and Vice President Al Gore will propose that governments not impose taxes or tariffs on digital trade on the Net, covering products such as published material, database information, and downloadable music and books, as well as financial transactions.

The White House will also urge governments not to control content, a position possibly boosted by the Supreme Court's ruling last week against the Communications Decency Act, which Clinton signed last year as part of telecom reform legislation.

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