A group of top level CEOs has an ambitious plan: to implement a global legislative framework for the next century -- at least for e-commerce. A conference on 13 September in Paris is supposed to mark the first step into the new economic world order.
Their fledgling organization, Global Business Dialogue on Electronic Commerce, or GBDe, is led by 29 CEOs from all over the world, including heavyweights like AOL's Steve Case, Lou Gerstner from IBM, and Gerald Levin from Time Warner.
CEOs, COOs, CFOs unite: Executive Summary- - - - - -
The company leaders are hoping to solve a common problem. "A patchwork of national legislation handicaps the dynamic development of e-commerce worldwide," says GBDe chairman Thomas Middelhoff, CEO of the German media giant Bertelsmann.
Art Sackler, Time Warner's vice president of law and public policy, says: "For example, every country has its own taxes. So you have a multitude of differing, even conflicting rules. That's no way to do business."
In Sackler's words, the goal of GBDe is to "encourage governments to be consistent in their legislation and to regulate no more than the absolute essential minimum."
For this purpose, nine GBDe "issue groups" developed proposals for a new framework in the field of e-commerce, including topics like data protection, taxes, and the protection of intellectual property.
Hundreds of people and organizations worldwide contributed to the discussions in the issue groups. They sent their proposals and comments to GBDe via the group's website. The input was collected and reviewed, the final decision about the conference papers was made by the CEOs. Now the results will be presented at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris.
But will the politicians listen?
It seems so: Participants of the conference will be members of many European governments as well as politicians from the United States and Japan.
"We're at a unique point in the history of the Internet because the medium is now big enough to matter but still small enough to be shaped," says Case. "That's why the work of the GBDe is so important -- for AOL and for the medium itself."
The idea for GBDe was born in June 1998 when 70 representatives from the Internet business gathered in Brussels to meet with the EU commission to discuss the future of the information society.
The message of the EU commission: The industry has to make proposals for a framework for the Internet business. Otherwise, the uncoordinated national legislation would remain.
