Part 1—Preliminary

Purposes

The purposes of this Act are—

1. (a) to recognise that transactions effected electronically are not by that reason alone invalid;

2. (b) to provide for the meeting of certain legal requirements as to writing and signatures by electronic communication;

3. (c) to permit documents to be produced to another person by electronic communication;

4. (d) to permit the recording and retention of information and documents in electronic form;

5. (e) to provide for the determination of time and place of dispatch and receipt of electronic communications;

6. (f) to stipulate when an electronic communication will bind its purported originator.

Commencement

This Act comes into operation on 1 September 2000.

Definitions

(1) In this Act—

consent includes consent that can reasonably be inferred from the conduct of the person concerned, but does not include consent given subject to conditions unless the conditions are complied with;

data includes the whole or part of a computer program within the meaning of the Copyright Act 1968 of the Commonwealth;

data storage device means any article or material (for example, a disk) from which information is capable of being reproduced, with or without the aid of any other article or device;

electronic communication means—

1. (a) a communication of information in the form of data, text or images by means of guided or unguided electromagnetic energy, or both; or

2. (b) a communication of information in the form of sound by means of guided or unguided electromagnetic energy, or both, where the sound is processed at its destination by an automated voice recognition system;