285 Bots, Babes and the Californication of Commerce Ian R. Kerr* 289 1. CONTRACT FORMATION IN THE AGE OF AUTOMATION 296 2. AUTOMATION, ROBOTICS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 306 3. BOTS & BABES 312 4. THE CALIFORNICATION OF COMMERCE 318 5. CONSUMER PROTECTION 324 6. CONCLUSION Copyright © 2004 by Ian R. Kerr. * Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa (
[email protected]). This article stems from a broader body of work on automated electronic commerce, originally commissioned by the Uniform Law Conference of Canada’s Special Working Group on Electronic Commerce. The author is deeply indebted to John Gregory for his generous support, wisdom and his deep enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity in the subject area. The author also wishes to extend his gratitude to the Canada Research Chair program and the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy for their generous contri- butions to the funding of this project. Thanks finally to Robert Dupelle, Marty Finestone, Andy Kaplan- Myrth, Jennifer Manning, and Nur Muhammed-Ally for all of their extraordinary efforts, their brilliance, and for the high quality of research assistance that they so regularly and reliably provide. 287 Bots, Babes and the Californication of Commerce Ian R. Kerr Space may be the final frontier But it’s made in a Hollywood basement Cobain can you hear the spheres Singing songs off station to station And Alderaan’s not far away It’s Californication –The Red Hot Chili Peppers VIRTUALLY ALL OF THE PRECIOUS BITS of legal attention devoted to automated electronic commerce have, until recently, focused on the issues surrounding con- tract formation.1 While, admittedly, it is extremely interesting to muse about the sense in which ‘autonomous,’ machine-based systems might be said to have the capacity to contract,2 or about whether the mere click of a mouse during the course of an automated transaction is sufficient to bind a consumer to an online service provider’s Terms of Service,3 I am concerned that excessive attention to 1.