On Judicial Relief For Online Shopping Consumers

With the rapid development of e-commerce economic, online shopping haspenetrated into people’s daily lives, and the consumers have gradually been networked.Because of the trans-regional, real-time, anonymity and other characteristics of theinternet environment, online consumers’ rights and interest protection and the judicialrelief have brought the current litigation system tremendous challenges. In the newinternet environment, the constitutive requirements of consumer should be redefined.Internet shopping market of buyers and sellers of the legal status also need furtherclearly. With the increasing online shopping disputes, the traditional dispute resolutionappears to be inadequate. The dispute settlement mechanism cultivated in internet isalso inefficient. Online consumer’s legal rights and interests require effectiveprotection. However, judicial relief for online shopping consumers is facing variousdifficulties, such as litigation costs and benefits of asymmetry, the prosecutiondifficulty and proof difficulty and so on. Due to the hysteresis quality of lawapplication, the existing litigation system exposes many defects in resolving theinternet consumption disputes. The related domestic litigation system needs to beestablished and perfected and the consumer’s litigious environment needs to perfect.Besides the foreword and conclusion, the dissertation is composed of three partsas follows:Chapter one is about the incongruent identification of the concept of consumers.On the basis of previous research, the dissertation would re-define the constitutiverequirements of consumer from the perspective of the existing legal regulation. At thesame time, it also redefines the constitutive requirements of the business operators.Then, according to the constitutive requirements of consumers and business operators,analyze the legal status of both the buyers and sellers in the network environment, itwill resolve the legal status problems of both buyers and sellers in online shopping.Besides, it also introduces the rights of consumers in online shopping dispute andrelevant regulations to some degree. The second chapter proposes the conclusion thatthe traditional relief can not fully guarantee the consumers’ legitimate rights andinterests any more, on the analysis of the characteristics of disputes in internetshopping, it makes a comparison of different dispute settlements and analyzes theiradvantages and disadvantages, then concludes the necessity of the judicial relief for internet shopping consumer. Meanwhile, it studies the difficulties of judicial relief onproper party, litigation jurisdiction, evidentiary issues and the litigation costs and soon, which reveals the establishment of a sound judicial relief is in need. The thirdchapter puts forward some suggestions for the establishment and development of thejudicial relief system for consumers. On the basis of characteristics of disputes ininternet environment, it generally analyzes the shortage of the current domesticgeneral civil litigation system, references the domestic and international advancedsystem design, and prescribes suggestions as follows: establish consumer litigationsystem, create a small claim procedure, improve judicial jurisdiction mechanisms andtry the on-line lawsuits.