J. Theor. Appl. Electron. Commer. Res., Volume 1, Issue 1 (April 2006) – 7 articles

This paper explores the ways in which Indigenous people around the world are participating in the World Wide Web, through establishing their own websites or accessing services via the Web. Indigenous websites are remarkably diverse: in addition to those representing Indigenous organizations and promoting Indigenous e-commerce, many websites have also been established to further unique concerns of Indigenous communities such as the maintenance and revitalization of Indigenous cultures, intercultural dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, political advocacy and mobilization, community rebuilding and social support for disadvantaged communities. Despite the early involvement of Indigenous people on the Web, there still remain many unresolved issues, which include low levels of computer literacy and Internet connectivity, the cost of the technology, low levels of business understanding to support e-commerce, and concerns over the misappropriation of Indigenous knowledge and culture. Full article

Australia is one of the leading nations using the internet in both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-tobusiness (B2B) settings (ABS 2004). However, little academic attention has been paid to the adoption of internetbased technology in the Australian franchising sector. Thus this paper addresses the problem of how Australian franchise organisations use internet-based technologies in their franchise systems. This research examines the websites of a sample of 202 Australian franchisors to determine their function as a communication and marketing tool within the franchise network. The aim is to document the web activities undertaken by Australian franchisors to provide an exploratory and descriptive snapshot that can be used as a platform for theoretical efforts The analysis reveals that adoption of internet technologies is still in its infancy in Australian franchise systems with the major uses of franchisor websites being providing information to consumers and as a means of attracting potential franchisees. There is evidence that franchise organisations are moving towards network behaviour through the internet. Full article

Reliability of manufacturing or production processes is heavily dependent upon the flawless operation of asset plant and equipment utilised in the processes. Nevertheless, continuous and seamless flow of information, aimed at real time access to process stakeholders provides the foundation for effective management of these assets. An essential requirement in this regard is the continuous availability of the condition monitoring information and its analyses in order to predict failure conditions as soon as the asset starts deviating away from its standard operational behaviour. This paper presents an integrated approach for prognostics based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. It presents an architecture aimed at introducing information processing capabilities at the asset level, thereby equipping the asset to be proactive in identifying its maintenance requirements wirelessly rather than relying on human interaction to examine the asset for irregularities. Full article

In the area of electronic and mobile commerce there are unique legal risks as well as concerns that also apply to traditional businesses. This paper reviews the impact of peer-to-peer ebusiness models in a legal and technical context with a view to formulating technical and legal policy suggestions for technologists, scientists, managers and government policy makers. To assist in addressing the intractable nature of the problems the researchers have developed a preliminary Legal Issues Management Framework. Issues such as forensic auditing, technical diligence, lawful intercept and sovereign risk are canvassed as well as the threats to current ebusiness models. Various traditional laws have been successfully applied to electronic transactions and new laws (cyberlaws) have been devised to deal with the latest technologies. Practitioners of P2P businesses must be aware of legal requirements and the risks involved in doing business in cyberspace. The digital economy develops at e-speed but the law does not. This paper outlines the enormous technological advances that impact on P2P business models and illustrates, with international examples, the reactions from international and national legal communities. Full article

The decline of regional Australia in terms of wealth and population during the two decades since 1980 has compelled the Federal Government to intervene. In 1997 the Australian Federal Government devoted in excess of $A460 million to a grant award scheme called the Regional Telecommunication Infrastructure Fund (RTIF) in which regional communities identified local telecommunication problems and applied for funds to correct them. Our project examines, through the lens of a conceptual framework extended from and informed by Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP), the effectiveness of the mechanism of this and similar schemes. The primary purpose of this paper is to present a study of the experience of Ballarat in relation to the Australian RTIF programme. Full article

For real-world applications digital coin systems, i.e., off-line payment systems offering not only the unforgeability of conventional coins but also the anonymity of customers making purchases, need to have some additional features. One of these additional features is the hardware protection of the system, provided by dedicated tamper-resistant devices called observers which are used to physically prevent illegitimate copying of coins. Another essential feature for practical applications is anonymity-revocation mechanisms. Basically, digital coin systems guarantee perfect anonymity, i.e., the bank cannot link views of the withdrawal and payments in order to determine whether or not a customer spent her money at a certain shop. The customer’s privacy protection is the main difference between coin systems and those based on credit card or cheque based systems. While privacy protection is a desirable property of cash systems, perfect anonymity is not. Perfect anonymity makes possible perfect blackmailing or money laundering. To prevent such “perfect crime” it must be possible to revoke the anonymity of customers in case of need. Anonymity revocation is done by a trusted third party. Cash systems that allow anonymity revocation are called fair. We present a coin system featuring both observer and fairness, showing that both concepts do not interfere with each other and can be implemented simultaneously without loss of security. We prove this claim not only by presenting a fair variant of the Brands’ coin system but additionally by outlining a generic framework for fair wallets in which essentially any blind signature scheme can be used. Unlike other fair off-line coin systems, fairness is implemented with the help of the observer, thereby reducing the computational effort during the withdrawal. Full article