Comparative Study On The Protection Of E-commerce Consumer Information Privacy Between China And The USA

In cyber times, appearance of e-commerce enterprises and diversity of consumers’econ omic relationships jointly attribute to a high degree of sharing consumers’ personal informati on among enterprises, which leads to a crisis can’t be overlooked that enterprises may ignore consumers’ privacy when they collect and use the personal information. Protection of consum ers’private information directly affects the footstone of e-commerce and profoundly influenc es the interaction between e-commerce companies and consumers; therefore it’s essential to b uild a highly adaptive e-commerce consumers’privacy protection system. Owing to its early development in e-commerce, America has already gone through an evolvement from industry self-regulation to legislature supervision in protection of e-commerce consumers. While in c hina, neither legislature level nor social level do we have protection system oriented exclusiv ely towards e-commerce consumers’ private information.In both fields there is an urgent nee d for building of such protection systems. Therefore, this thesis is going to compare and contr ast Chinese and American Consumer Privacy Protection System, and to introduce and examine the legislature development as well as research achievements in this regard, and finally in consideration of Chinese legal and business environments, try to ex plore a suitable protection system of e-commerce consumers’privacy in China.First of all, this thesis discusses the practical effects of American industry self-discipline mode and then contrasts it with the current situation in Chinese industry self-regulation, whic h leads to a conclusion that it’s not suitable for China to adopt this industry self-regulation m ode due to inherent defects in American industry self-regulation mode and characteristics of Chinese industry current situation.Furthermore, among four main theories explaining how consumers’information privacy protection came to a formal institution, American legislative history shows a shift from free fl ow theory to strict supervision by government; whereas in China, a synthesized analysis of th e facts appropriately leads to the strict supervision mode and specific statutes should be prom ulgated to protect consumers.In addition, the most present legislative framework of America presents its special attention to c onsumer information control, which in China, is relatively neglected. Therefore this paper su ggests a reference to American legal framework that provides a complete protection by a thre e-layered institution ranging from information collection, usage to transaction so that we can erect a suitable consumers private information protection system which can promote consume rs’involvement in information procession and nail down responsibilities and liabilities of e-b usiness enterprises.