The C2c Deal Of E - Commerce Platform Provider In The Legal Responsibilities

With the rapid development of electronic commerce, online shopping is popular in China in recent years, C2C is the most outstanding one. With the dramatic development of the C2C electronic trading process, the number of disputes is increasing at the same time beacuse of the consumer rights infringement, intellectual property infringement, lack of protection of privacy and other risks involved. Consequently, the legal issues of the C2C electronic transactions obtained more and more attentions and researchs such as the legal rights of the platform providers in the C2C electronic transactions. Through the analysis of the domestic scholars including doctrine of seller or joint venture partner, the doctrine of intermediary, the doctrine of counter lessor and some other doctrines, this article argues that the trading platform providers act similar to the traditional counter lessor, but not exactly the same. After identifying the legal nature of the platform providers, this article examines the service obligations in the agreements between the platform providers and their consumers with the example of Taobao, such as authenticating the user identity, storing the information data, protecting the user privacy and so on. Subsequently, this article arranges the national laws, regulations, industry standards and some typical local norms relate to the platform provider in the development of electronic commerce.With learning the legislation status of the United States, European Union, Japan and other countries, the article proposes that the platform providers have the legal responsibilities in managing legally, operating smoothly and orderly, regulating the goods and information etc. The provider should compensate the user who suffer losses along with the breach of contract or their infringement. Domestic legislation to the platform providers is currently lagging behind the development of electronic commerce. It is not perfect and difficult to operate in practice with other potential problems. Meanwhile, a comprehensive law to regulate such participants like the electronic commerce platform providers in the legal responsibility, is not only the need of resolving the disputes in C2C electronic transactions but also the need of the long-term development of the electronic commerce. Finally, this study suggests electronic commerce legislation should follow the international practice and consider the advanced experience which is suitable to the domestic conditions after analyzing the national situation, instead of just copying others. In addition to improve the preparations gradually, the electronic commerce law shall be more operational under the certain management and combine with the network technology to maintain forward-looking aspect. The introduction of electronic commerce law will regulate C2C market in a timely manner and promote the smooth development of electronic commerce.