전자증거의 증거능력과 증거력에 관한 민사증거법상 고찰 -위법하게 수집된 전자증거와 삭제된 데이터를 중심으로-

The infiltration of electronic document and email into the business world has increased the efficiency of conducting business. This change may impact the practice of law, specifically in the litigation arena. Traditional litigation process, however, was not suitable for the changes by electronic evidence. Electronically stored information is totally different from analog information. It has lots of specific characters which may cause many problems in the present litigation process. Electronically stored information is easy to make, use and store efficiently, which in turn make people to use it more frequently. It is also different in volume, accessibility and volatility. Furthermore it is convenient to copy and can be easily restored when deleted. Finally it needs specific machines or programs to read or investigate. With this in mind, we have to rethink about admissibility and competency of the electronic evidence. In the traditional litigation process, there was no general limitation for them because of the principle of free evaluation of evidence. But now the electronic evidence need to be limited with some tests considering the electronic evidence's characters.