People and businesses who never would have dealt with each other absent the borderless world of the Internet, start doing business together and enter into contracts. Consumers, who were traditionally limited to domestic markets, start buying abroad. Small and medium enterprises enter international markets, which were before reserved to larger businesses. The commercial activities on the net increase significantly every year. Inevitably such rapidly increasing activities will generate more and more disputes. How will they be resolved?

The traditional dispute resolution systems are most often ill equipped to provide effective redress. The competent court may be located too far away, or be too expensive for smaller disputes, or be too slow for business needs. Traditional arbitration and other forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) are also often incapable of meeting the expectations of users for similar reasons—even though attempts are made at improving their efficiency. The result is a vacuum: for many of these disputes no effective resolution mechanism will be available and access to justice is simply not guaranteed. Given that access to justice is considered to be a fundamental human right, this state of affairs is obviously problematic and calls for a change.

The change may come from online dispute resolution (ODR), i.e. from the use of electronic communications for purposes of dispute resolution. Or stated differently, from a dispute resolution method modeled on the very activities that give rise to the disputes. A dispute resolution method which uses the same medium as was used for the conclusion of the contract, and often also the performance of the contract. A method which relies on conceptual proximity.

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This is a critical time for ODR. If the transition to a large-scale operation is mismanaged, it will never deliver the promises it entails. On the other hand, if ODR mechanisms are properly designed and operated, and if the legal framework is technology friendly while securing due process, this new movement of dispute resolution will turn e-commerce into a real marketplace. The existence of effective means to enforce the law will boost confidence in e-commerce, and more confidence will generate more business. At the same time, ODR will constitute a giant step towards efficient justice and a milestone in the history of dispute resolution. This book is written in the hope that it may contribute to making ODR a highlight of dispute resolution.

This book is a study of online dispute resolution (ODR) from a dual perspective. On the one hand, it is an analysis of the ODR movement, its origins, goals, components, and evolution. This analysis is based on a forensic observation of the present state of play. Some of the results of this observation are published as annexes, in the form of a survey of the services offered by 54 ODR providers and of interviews with representatives of some of the main providers. The purpose of these annexes is to provide the interested reader with the underlying factual information. On the other hand, this book is a review of the legal framework governing ODR, which primarily involves an examination of existing arbitration and mediation laws and rules as they are applied to online processes.

Because of the central role that the Internet and dispute resolution play in contemporary society, this book should appeal to all those with an interest in dispute resolution, recent developments in arbitration and mediation, e-commerce and international trade, globalization, interactions between information technology and law, and the regulation of cyberspace.