[2] The examples are from Noam, E "Reconciling Free Speech and Freedom of Information" in Proceedings of the First Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy 1991, IEEE Computer Society Press.

[3] SWIFT is an international message system intended to facilitate the inter-bank transfer of funds. It is an acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. For a description, see Ellinger, EP "Modern Banking Law", Oxford, 1987.

[4] Noam, E "Reconciling Free Speech and Freedom of Information" in Proceedings of the First Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy 1991, IEEE Computer Society Press.

[5] The Prodigy case is discussed in Naughton, EJ "Is Cyberspace a public forum? Computer bulletin boards, free speech and state action" 81 Georgetown Law J 409 (1992); see also DiLello, EV "Functional equivalence and its application to freedom of speech on computer bulletin boards" 26 Col J of Law and Soc Prob 199 (1993).

[6] The account of the Prodigy dispute is taken from DiLello, EV "Functional equivalence and its application to freedom of speech on computer bulletin boards" 26 Col J of Law and Soc Prob 199 (1993).

[7] Federal law prohibits the network user from reading private email: 18 USC 2510-2521 (1988).

[8] See Tribe, LH "The Constitution in Cyberspace: Law and Liberty beyond the Electronic Frontier" in Proceedings of the First Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy 1991, IEEE Computer Society Press.

[9] That is, does the message remain unaltered?

[10] That is, does the message originate from the purported sender?

[11] How can we be certain that this is the "original" document?

[12] This may be done, for example, by ordinary call back mechanisms or by standard password procedures.

[13] Legally, the trusted depository holds the "bill" on behalf of some party. Some legal mechanism must be provided whereby the "possession" is deemed to be changed to be on behalf of the transferee.

[14] See Ramberg 'Electronic transfer of rights to goods in transit' in Thomsen and Wheble (eds) Trading with EDI - The Legal Issues (1989) IBC Financial Books.

[15] For a detailed description of the legal problems associated with a particular deposit scheme for trading bills of exchange, see Tyree 'Commercial Bills' in Austin and Vann (eds) The Law of Public Company Finance (1986) The Law Book Company.

[16] For a discussion of public key cryptography and its relationship to ordinary cryptography, see Sedgewick Algorithms (1983) Addison-Wesley and Rivest, Shamir and Adleman 'A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems' 21 Communications of the ACM 2 (1978).

[17] See, for example, Damon 'Freedom of Information versus National Sovereignty: the need for a new global forum for the resolution of transborder data flow problems' 10 Fordham International Law Journal 262 (1986-1987) p 276-277.

[18] See, for example, Miller, AR "Copyright protection for computer programs, databases and computer generated works: Is anything new since CONTU?" 106 Harv L Rev 978 (1993).

[19] See, for example, Sauvant 'Trade in services: the case of transborder data flows: a panel' 78 American Society of International Law Proceedings 240 (1985); Miller 'Teleinformatics, transborder data flows and the emerging struggle for information: an introduction to the arrival of the new information age' 20 Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems 88 (1988).

[20] For an early but still authoritative discussion of the problems of machine intelligence, see Turing 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence' (1950) 59 Mind 433. The current techniques of artificial intelligence are found in Charniak and McDermott Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (1985) Addison-Wesley.

[21] The FINDER program was written by Alan Tyree. It has recently been extended and refined by James Popple in a PhD thesis in computer science at the Australian National University: "SHYSTER - a pragmatic legal expert system". The original development was assisted in part by a grant from the Australian Research Grants Committee.