Electronic Bill Of Lading Legal Issues

The fast development of Electronic Commerce has already had a broad and profound influence. Almost all the fields of industry in the world have been impacted by this"computerlizing"wave including ship industry, the traditional service business. Confronting the big challenge and the big commercial opportunity, the ship companies have been taking an active action by setting up websites, offering enquiries of sailing dates and prices via the Internet and providing electronic reservations. All these services have been a part of daily operation in many big or middle-size ship companies and transportation agencies.Electronic B/L (bills of lading) thus becomes more and more important and even indispensable. As a graduate student in the legal field, we should not only know what B/L is, but also the its operation and recent situation as well as analyzing and studying the application of it from the legal aspect. Most of all, we should try to find out and solve the difficulties during its operation which would prevent it from developing throughout the world.This paper is divided into four chapters to introduce and analyze Electronic B/L gradually. The first chapter introduces the background which gives birth to the Electronic B/L. The author then expound the definition, function and advantages of the Electronic B/L from the comparison between"Electronic B/L"and"B/L computerlizing"to help the readers to acquaint themselves with some basic elements of the Electronic B/L."The second chapter introduces the operation of the Electronic B/L in practice basing on the above introduction. The general idea of its operation is given through the introduction of"SeaDocs"experiment,"CMI"rules and"Bolero"system--three of the most influential Electronic B/L projects and some other representative ones.The third chapter begins with some domestic legislation of the Electronic B/L such as Canada and British. Then the author introduces some major international legislations of Electronic B/L and the effort made by UNCITRAL (United Nations...