On The Legal Protection Of Consumers' Personal Information Privacy In Electronic Commerce

The rapid development of modern information technology has made it easy that E-commerce businesses collect, process and disseminate consumers'personal information. There is a explosively growing trend towards online consumers'personal information collecting and exchanging. At the same time, the social phenomena become increasingly prominent that the personal information is illegally collected, maliciously utilized and disseminated, which seriously violate online consumers'freedom, the basic rights and legitimate interests. However, science and technology is not the main culprit in the online consumers'personal information privacy issue, and the initiator is the power imbalance between the consumers and the enterprises in the information flow relations. The solution to this problem is that the power imbalance and conflict of interests can be balanced among online consumers, E-commerce businesses and society in the control over the personal information and participation in the information flow, which is also the key to the legal protection. At present, there is lack of legislation and industry self-regulation in China's online consumers'personal information privacy protection. It not only fail to reverse this power imbalance and protect online consumers'personal information privacy effectively, but also cause further this information privacy issue to deteriorate rapidly. Therefore, In China, the problem to be solved currently is how to build a reasonable and efficient consumers'information privacy legal framework in E-commerce in order to balance the power imbalance and conflict of interests among online consumers, E-commerce businesses and society in the control over the personal information and participation in the information flow.Nowadays all kinds theories of information privacy has been proposed one after another, e.g."Right to be let alone","Limited access to the self","Personal information control","Property rights in personal information","Right of personal information determination", etc. Continuous debates between them set more sound and practical theoretical foundation for online consumers'personal information privacy protection."Right of personal information determination"provide the most appropriate and pertinent explanation for this information privacy issue. This theory has not only recognized that information privacy has a individual value which the development of individual personality and the protection of individual legitimate rights depend on, and called for strengthening individuals'control over the personal information and participation in the information flow process, but also emphasized that information privacy has a social value which the democracy system, the information economy and a society in harmony cannot run without, and it should be subject to the public interest. In short, information privacy is not only a personal issue, but also a collective, public and common social problem. And how to realize this problem impact greatly on the system for protecting online consumers'personal information privacy. Based on"Right of personal information determination", the online consumers'personality interest should be protected and the personal value of information privacy should be respected. Meanwhile, the social value of information privacy should be taken into account, and a comprehensive system for protecting online consumers'personal information privacy should be built from the legislative, executive and judicial levels, taking information protection agency as the core means.History is a mirror. The path to online consumers'personal information privacy protection in China can be drawn from research on the two different systems of legal protection between the U.S.A and the E.U. The U.S.A and the E.U not only hold to different theories, but also adopt divergent protection systems. The Americans focus on the economic characteristic of information privacy, highlighting its personal value and establish a bottom-up enforcement, taking market-oriented regulation and industry self-regulation as core means. The Europeans emphasize the political characteristic of information privacy, highlighting its social value, and gradually form a comprehensive and unified legislative model, and build up a top-down enforcement mechanism, taking information protection agency as the core means. As a self-regulatory mechanism, technology rules play a role in different ways between the two systems of legal protection. However, these models have their advantages and disadvantages, not solving this information protection issue alone. As a matter of fact, in the digitalized information age, online consumers'personal information privacy involve the political, economic and technological factors. The State, market and science and technology should make use of their own advantages well. Laws, market rules and technology standards should take advantage of their own adjustment. National information protection agencies, industry self-regulation and science and technology should be useful.By insighting into the nature of the information privacy problem, studying advanced theories and practical experience of personal information privacy protection from other countries and analysing the current state of legal protection in China, this article holds that comprehensive protection and systemic adjustments are needed in order to solve the consumers'personal information privacy issue in E-commerce which single legal system or pure industry self-regulation cannot. The comprehensive protection system is that the dominant position and macro-regulation of State and legislation are combined with the fundamental role and micro-regulation of market and industry self-regulation and self-protection of online consumers to build up a proper and effective consumers'personal information privacy legal framework in China's E-commerce.