1.1 From paper based district registers to one register with electronic registration
The necessity of having a registration system for ships – for public law as well as private law reasons – has long been acknowledged. It suffices here to mention the Act on Ship Registration of 1901, based on district registration for Norwegian owned ships. A long required amendment was made in 1972 when the rules were upgraded and transferred to the Maritime Code (MC) – the present one dated 24th June 1994 No. 39. One important further step was taken in 1992, when a centralized edb-register was established, and gradually electronic documents were then introduced. And the final step in this direction is the amendments made in 2023(1) The Act 115/2023), with travaux préparatoires Prop.129 L (2012–2023) (based upon a letter of hearing of 2nd March 2021) and Innst.59 L (2023–2024)., which are the topic of this article.