RE: CPA negotiation section???

[James Bryce Clark <jbc@lawyer.com>]

Our work should accommodate all three of the following great points culled
from post-Vancouver e-mails.   I don't think any of them contradict the others.

*   Stefano's concern that a trading partner (or portal-type-entity, or
BPE-type-widget) be permitted to offer a slate of pre-digested CPAs that
require no dynamic negotiation.  

*   Duane's idea about a default process that will allow strangers with no
pre-digested solution to find each other, and do a CPA deal, by forcing a
bit of the logic.

*   Dave Welsh's point that we should offer up a few carefully-culled
default legal undertakings, so that trading partners can adopt them to get
a reasonable degree of assurance that their e-deals may be legally binding.
 As you know, I'm well along in working something, and received some great
help in Vancouver.  But again, this should be an option, -not- mandatory.
If a TP pair wants to go Live To Cyberspace, with their checkbooks hooked
up to their business-logic-bots, and without what I regard as adequate
legal protection, God bless 'em.   In fact, that's what much EDI does
today.   Somehow commerce survives it.  (Without lawyers!  The horror!)  

Jamie, the Lawyer