120. The representative of Venezuela thanked the Secretariat for its comprehensive paper, which touched on virtually all points of intellectual property related to electronic commerce. Electronic commerce seemed a paradoxical issue. The more one investigated it and obtained information, the more one had concerns rather than answers. He had some preliminary comments which basically related to electronic commerce and copyright. Firstly, his delegation had many concerns regarding moral rights. Moral rights were protected in many countries, but not in others. What would happen when transmissions of a large quantity of authors' works began, and the right of integrity was protected in some countries but not others? Secondly, his delegation had many questions with respect to the problem of the efficacy of protection. There currently existed, according to the two WIPO treaties concluded in 1996, several measures of protection for copyright, both on-line or by wireless media. Measures of this kind also existed in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the United States, namely measures for authorization to communicate to the public and measures against technological circumvention. His delegation had many doubts in relation to this matter, as it did not have experience in it, nor the latest technology in this area. For example, his delegation had doubts as to how these measures were protected in practice, in terms of law and jurisdiction; as to how individuals or natural persons who might have infringed intellectual property rights were identified; what was the acceptance or order of evidence in these cases; did means of security exist and were copyright works protectable on the net or were they unprotectable? The truth was that his delegation had little idea and there existed many proposals in law for protecting works on the net but, at the practical level, there were many doubts in many parts of the world, including in the United States itself, and among different lobbies, with different views on the feasibility of protection. He welcomed the comments of any country which might have experience in these matters to facilitate the Council's understanding of the matter.
