해상법의 IT화 관련 개정의견

A Study on the Proposed Amendment of Maritime Law relating to Information Technology

Information Technology affects so many sectors of traditional laws including Maritime Law. Since 2001, United Nations Commission on International Trade Law(UNCITRAL) is preparing new International Transport Institute to make an unification of transport law legal systems of every nations. It has several provisions relating to electronic communication, per example, electronic communications relating to bills of lading which is provided as namely ‘a negotiable electronic transport record’, the transfer of that record, Issuance of electronic transport record, electronic signature of the carrier, right of control etc. Additionally, Australia has made Sea-Carriage Documents Act 1997 to provide Electronic and Computerised Sea-Carriage Documents Act. U.S.A. also has proposed a Draft Revision of electronic transport documents in U.S. COGSA 1999. In recent years, Korea is preparing to revise Maritime Law in Korea Commercial Law Section 5. So in this procedures, it needs to enact those provisions relating to information technology in maritime law as following. Firstly, It needs to provide for Maritime law several articles on the electronic bill of lading. Because frequently, bill of lading would reach destination later than the ship and, in such cases, cargo is often nevertheless delivered to persons claiming their delivery without surrendering an original bill of lading but instead sometimes offering a bill of lading guarantee or bank guarantee. If electronic bill of lading provisions are enacted in maritime law and this can be used, then those problems mentioned above can be solved. Further another effects can be arose to make trade procedures easy relating to electronic trade. So this article suggests that five provisions of electronic bill of lading could be enacted in maritime law as article 813-2(Issuance of electronic bill of lading and registry system), article 813-3(substitute paper form of bill of lading with electronic bill of lading), article 813-4(the transfer of rights of the holder of electronic bill of lading), article 813-5(requirements and procedures of electronic bill of lading), article 813-6(requirement of electronic signature). Secondly, maritime law should be revised so that those provisions relating to paper based transport documents provision could be applied in the electronic situation. So this paper proposes that article 874-2 which is a provision of the legal effect of electronic communication should be enacted in maritime law.