ECRA Co-Editors' Introduction for Volume 7, Issue 2

TY - JOUR

T1 - ECRA Co-Editors' Introduction for Volume 7, Issue 2

AU - Kauffman, Robert J.

AU - Chau, Patrick Y.K.

AU - Payne, Terry R.

AU - Westland, J. Christopher

N1 - Funding Information: The sole regular article that appears in this issue is entitled ‘Experiences in Developing a Fair-Exchange E-Commerce Protocol Using Common Off-the-Shelf Components.’ The authors, Indrajit Ray and Hongjun Zhang of the Colorado State University, explore the issue of ‘fair-exchange’ as a means to formulate a effective protocols for transaction-making in electronic commerce that are trust-preserving for buyers and sellers on the Internet. The essence of the authors’ perspective is that some kind of effective mechanism design is required to balance the interest of the participants, for example, by permitting the buyer to validate the characteristics of the product that is to be consumed before actually paying for it. The basis for the technical innovation that the authors present is known as the ‘theory of cross validation.’ The theory is based on the availability of ‘asymmetric encryption technology,’ which itself is developed from the well-known RSA encryption. The authors contend that the application of this theory in mechanism design for value exchange via the Internet ensures that both buyers and sellers are not subject to any sort of foul play that could lead to post-transaction regret or a desire to unwind the transaction. The authors develop the analytical and modeling background for their innovation, establish a basis for the ‘validated receipt property’ of their protocol, and show what the nature of the built-in security protection is. They describe their protocol in detail, and illustrate how it works. They also provide a proof for why the protocol ensures fair-exchange. An especially interesting aspect of the authors’ work is presented via the system and logical architectures for the operation of a trial e-commerce environment that does fair-exchange protocol-based payment validation. The authors’ work is funded by the National Science Foundation in the context of a larger project related to Internet exchange, exchange protocols and security.

PY - 2008/6

Y1 - 2008/6

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/44149125275

U2 - 10.1016/j.elerap.2008.04.004

DO - 10.1016/j.elerap.2008.04.004

M3 - Editorial

AN - SCOPUS:44149125275

SN - 1567-4223

VL - 7

SP - 135

EP - 136

JO - Electronic Commerce Research and Applications

JF - Electronic Commerce Research and Applications

IS - 2

ER -