China’s Supreme People’s Court has stated that it will recognize evidence submitted for cases tried in the country’s new online court system if that evidence has been provably and securely logged on some type of secure distributed database (blockchain or DLT).
The Chinese legal system has been conducting trials online in Hangzhou City since August 2017, and says it will shortly be expanding the program to Beijing and Guangzhou.
So far, Chinese Internet courts have dealt mainly with disputes originating on the internet itself, including problems with online shopping and services, micro loans, copyright infringement, infringement on personal rights online, disputes over domain names and, “other internet-related civil or administrative cases designated by the higher courts.”
All stages of cases referred to the Internet courts are being handled digitally and online, including “acceptance, delivery, mediation, evidence exchange, pre-trial preparation, court trial, and sentencing…”
Such a system would naturally require a way to securely log, track and make evidence available to relevant parties, and some form of distributed database (blockchain, DLT, encrypted) seems called for.
According to the Supreme People’s Court:
“The electronic data submitted by the parties (shall be considered valid if they) can prove (its) authenticity through electronic signature, trusted time stamp, hash value check, blockchain and other evidence collection, fixed and tamper-proof technical means or through electronic forensic evidence platform certification.”
Litigants can also, “apply to someone with expertise to comment on electronic data technology issues.”
The Hangzhou Internet court reportedly allowed a litigant to submit blockchain-secured evidence for the first time in June of this year.