Be a SMART User
Prepare for your E-Business Plan
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The Big Picture of Electronic
Commerce
Telephone services.
 The motoring organizations have long supplied travel information over the
telephone. Now, the cellular phone companies have the technology to
locate a mobile phone within one metre (www.uswireless.com). The market
for personal mobile information services (such as the location of the nearest
hotel, restaurant or cash dispenser) will be enormous.
Internet websites.
 Travel company websites, such as that of British Airways (ww.ba.com), are
already selling tickets online. Already 57 of the 75 largest airlines, hotels
and car-hire companies take online bookings. Likewise, intermediaries,
such as Travelocity (www.travel.co.uk/), will search for bargains for you.
Electronic kiosks.
 An increasing number of touch-screen information and ticketing kiosks are
appearing in railway stations and in travel agents, such as Thomas Cook.
TV channels.
 The Travel Channel on UK cable focuses on travel documentaries. Such
television channels should be major beneficiaries of interactive digital
television.
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Total Electronic Commerce
Both from Information Superhighway and
traditional channels
Electronic
Commerce
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Domain Names (URL)
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Register for your URL
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Select the right extention
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Commercial .com
Non-profit organization .org
Government .gov
Education .edu
Use of trademark or brand names as domain
name
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Domain Names
Network Solutions Inc. (NSI)
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Contracted by the government to assign domain
addresses, such as, .com, .org, .edu, .gov, .net.
European countries is weary of the US assuming
the rights to direct Internet governance and
effectively subjecting the Internet to U.S. law
On June 1 in 1998, the monopoly of NSI over
domain names ended
A registration system is created. It is shared with
several other competing companies
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Commercial Strategies
Portals - Sell, buy, advertise and expand!
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Directories like Yahoo!
Search engines like Infoseek
Online stores like Amazon.com
Online retail channels – complement existing shops
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British Airway (www.ba.com)
Freemans (www.freemans.com)
Tesco (www.tesco.co.uk)
Customer Care – lower cost for customer service
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E-Bay www.ebay.com
DHL www.dhl.com
Subscriber bases
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www.hotmail.com
www.icq.com
www.freeserve.co.uk
Banner Advertising
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Portals
Principal gateways to the Internet, and has major revenue
potential for advertising, market capitalization and leverage into
few businesses.
Portal are by definition Gorillas
Classified into:
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Browsers (e.g. Netscape)
Service providers (e.g. www.aol.com)
Directories (e.g. Yahoo!)
Search Engineers (e.g. Yahoo!, Go/Infoseek, Altavista, and Excite
etc)
Online Stories (e.g. www.amazon.com, www.schwab.com )
Intermdiaries (e.g. Ebay www.ebay.com)
Free Services (e.g. Hotmail, and Freeserve www.freeserve.com )
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Search Engine
Alta Vista
Excite
HotBot
Lycos
WebCrawler
Yahoo!
Northern Light
Infohiway
Infoseek
search.com
EasySearcher
AsianNet
CARI
Globe Page
Matilda
WWW Yellow Pages
http://www.altavista.com/
http://www.excite.com/
http://www.hotbot.com/
http://www.lycos.com/
http://www.webcrawler.com/
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.northernlight.com/
http://www.infohiway.com/
http://www.infoseek.go.com/
http://www.search.com
http://www.easysearch.com
http://www.asiannet.com/
http://www.cari.com.my
http://www.globepage.com/
http://www.aaa.com.au/
http://www.yellow-pg.com/
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Find the Right Category
Directories use category to increase the
speed of search
Give your page a descriptive title
 Company Name
 Products
 Brand Name
 Technology
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Links
Create links in other sites in relation to
your business
Increase traffic
Increase the chance being seen by
potential clients
Link to portals
Put up Advertisement Banners
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Behind the scene –
META Tags
Not visible on the web page itself
Invaluable for storing information about your web
page
Essential for advertising your web site correctly in
some search engine and web directories
Use the tags to:
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Describe your site
Identify the author
Identify the keywords and description of the page
Many search engines will display the first 30 words in
META tag for search result display
For more about META tags, visit www.lepak.com
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Meta Tag
Search Engine
Placement Don’ts
Be honest using META tags!
DON’T
Repeat and repeat with the same keyword
to gain a higher ranking on search results
 Use entirely inappropriate keywords to
attract visitors (e.g. FREE OFFER)
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Checking your URL
Status
Submit your URL to search engines
Check these engines two weeks later
See how your site is ranked
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If you have a low ranking
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If you have a high ranking
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Improve your META tag
Beware that your competitor is also watching!!!
Maintaining a top ranking requires constant
monitoring and reworking of keywords or adding of
content
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Legal and Ethical Issues: an
Overview
Privacy
Intellectual Property
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Difficult to protect since it is easy and inexpensive to copy
and disseminate digitized information
Free Speech
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Internet provides the largest opportunity for free speech
Taxation
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Illegal to impose new sales taxes on Internet business at the
present time
Consumer Protection
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Many legal issues are related to electronic trade
misrepresentation to different kinds of fraud
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Legal Policy for EC
E-Commerce is comparatively new
Legal, ethical and other public policy
issues that are necessary for EC’s
existence are still evolving
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Ethical Issues
Put up true and honest statements
Define code of ethics for collection and
use of personal data
Ownership of data
Right to access private information
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How is Private Information
Collected?
Examples of how people collect private
information through Internet
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Reading your newsgroups’ postings
Finding you in the Internet Directory
Making your browser record information about you
Recording what your browsers say about you
Reading your e-mail
Give you a “Cookie”
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Cookies
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Piece of information that allows a Web site
to record one’s comings and goings
Web sites can ‘remember’ information about
users and respond to their preferences on a
particular site, process is transparent to users
 Web sites can maintain information on a
particular user across HTTP connections
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Cookies (cont.)
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Reasons for using cookies
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to personalize information
to improve online sales/services
to simplify tracking of popular links or demographics
to keep sites fresh and relevant to the user’s interests
to enable subscribers to log in without having to enter a
password every visit
to keep track of a customer’s search preferences
personal profiles created are more accurate than selfregistration
Solutions to cookies
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users can delete cookie files stored in their computer
use of anti-cookie software (e.g. Cookie Cutter and
Anonymous Cookie)
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Protecting Your Privacy
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Think before you give out personal information on a
site
Track the use of your name and information
Keep your newsgroups’ posts out of archives
Use the Anonymizer when browsing
Live without cookies
Use anonymous remailers
Use encryption
Reroute your mail away from your office
Ask your ISP or employer about a privacy policy
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5 basic principles for Privacy
Protection
Notice/Awareness— Customers must be given notice and be
able to make informed decisions.
Choice/Consent— Customers must be made aware of their
options as to how their personal information may be used.
Consent may be granted through ‘opt-Out’ clauses requiring
steps.
Access/Participation— Consumers must be able to access their
personal information and challenge the validity of the data.
Integrity/security— Consumers must be assured that the data is
secure and accurate.
Enforcement/Redress— There must always exist a method of
enforcement and remedy. The alternatives are government
intervention, legislation for private remedies, or self-regulation.
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Smart Hong Kong ID Card
What information should be included in the
ID Card?
 Who should have the right to access the
information?
 Should the Hong Kong ID Card be used for
E-Commerce (includes digital signature)?
 Is it worth to replace the current HKID Card
with the Smart HKID Card?

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Protecting Intellectual
Property
Copyright
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A statutory grant that provides the creators of
intellectual property with ownership of it for 28
years
Trade Secret
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Intellectual work such as a business plan, which is
a company secret and is not based on public
information
Patent
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A document that grants the holder exclusive rights
on an invention for 17 years
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Copyright Protection
Techniques
Digital watermarks
embedding of invisible marks
 can be represented by bits in digital content
 hidden in the source data, becoming
inseparable from such data
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www.ewatermark.com
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Legal Perspectives
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Electronic Theft (NET) Act, December 1997
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software industries lost $13.2 billion to pirates in 1997
imposed criminal liability for individuals who reproduce or
distribute copies of copyrighted works even if no
commercial advantage or financial gain exists
even if individual does not personally benefit from
unauthorized distribution of software, it does not mean
that it does not cost the developer, license or patent
holder
it will ultimately cost the honest consumer more money
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Legal Perspectives
(cont’d)
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Digital Copyright Clarification and
Technology Education Act
limits the scope of digital copyright infringement
by allowing distance learning exemptions
 “individuals other than the author or owner of a
digital work may make incidental copies if the
copying does not conflict with the exploitation of
the work, and does not prejudice the legitimate
interests of the author”
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Legal Perspectives
(cont’d)
Currently, no liability for a pirate who links
his or her site to a party from which to
download software
 Internet access providers are anxious to
know how far the liability issue extends
 Online Copyright Liability Limitation Act
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seeks to protect Internet access providers from
liability for direct and vicarious liability under
specific circumstances where they have no
control or knowledge of infringement
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Legal Perspectives
(cont.)
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998
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reasserts copyright in cyberspace
makes illegal most attempts to defeat anti-copying technology
requires the National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA) to review the effect the bill would have on
the free flow of information and makes recommendations for
any changes two years after it is signed into law
lets companies and common citizens circumvent anti-copying
technology when necessary to make software or hardware
compatible with other products, to conduct encryption research
or to keep personal information from being spread via Internet
“cookies” or other copy-protection tools
forbids excessive copying of databases, even when those
databases contain information already in the public domain
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International Aspects of
Intellectual Property
The World Intellectual Property Organization
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more than 60 member countries to come up with
an international treaty
part of the agreement is called the ‘database
treaty’
its aim is to protect the investment of firms that
collect and arrange information
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What’s Most Important?
Self-discipline
Enjoy your e-living, e-learning
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