On The Preservation Of Electronic Evidence In Civil Proceedings

With the fast development of electronic information technology, electronic information begins to flood people’s life, and electronic evidence in civil proceedings is increasingly widespread used. With the revision of the Civil Procedure Law in 2012, electronic evidence has been included in the type of evidence in civil proceedings. Academicians have turned their attention to electronic evidence from the type of evidence it belongs to into its admissible adoption and preservation. There are certain problems of electronic evidence preservation in the part of legislation, practice and theory. In order to solve these problems, this article mainly talks about the basic problems of electronic evidence preservation in terms of the roles of the program. This article consists of the following components in addition to the conclusion part:Part one: This part introduces the status and controversy of electronic evidence preservation in the Civil Procedure Law, on present situation of legislation, practice and theory. It tries to tease out relevant documents on legal and industry standards, analyze theories and views of electronic evidence preservation, and find out urgent problems in practice of electronic evidence collection, in terms of parties, lawyers, Court and notary public, forensic institutions, Network Technology corps, universities’ research institutions, and Internet service providers.Part two: This part tells about the purpose and premise of electronic evidence preservation. It emphasizes that the purpose is to make judges believe the evidence and the premise is the support of public or authority and professional technology. It points out that, the public or authority and professional technology must be used in electronic evidence preservation, in order to let judges believe the evidence.Part three: This part introduces the roles of program in electronic evidence preservation, in terms of countries and regions like Taiwan in China, Japan, the United States, Europe and North America, in order to get something useful about the status and function of every roles of the program in our country’s electronic evidence preservation, from the legislation and practice of these countries and regions, by drawing on their rules, experience, technology and methods.Part four: This part tries to determine the status and function of every role of the program in electronic evidence preservation. it regards parties and lawyers as the role who collects electronic evidence and starts the program of electronic evidence preservation; Court and notary public as the role who carries out the program; forensic institutions, Network technology corps, universities’ research institutions and Internet service providers as the role who provides technology. Besides, it also analyzes these roles’ strengths and limitations on protection of the public right or credibility and support of technology.Part five: This part tells about how to make the program of electronic evidence preservation better in circumstances of distinguishing all roles’ status and function. Here things talked about mainly includes the ways how to improve the starting program on parties and lawyers, the implementing program on Court and notary public, the program of technology providing on all roles with professional technology. In the analysis of main aspects, it reflects the three roles’ main advantages, makes reasonable convergence of the three programs, in order to promote the overall improvement of electronic evidence preservation program.