Discussion On Protection Of Online Shopping Consumer’s Rights And Interests In China

With the development of science and economy, the Internet has gone deep into the thousands of households. According to "Statistical Report on Internet Development in China ", by 2014 December, China’s Internet penetration rate has been 47.9% and the Internet users have been up to 649 million. Accompanied by this phenomenon, online shopping has become an important part of China’s household consumption. But, worryingly, because of the false conduct propaganda and the "three-no" products and etc., the cases violating the interests of online shopping consumers have been more and more. In this regard, in order to achieve effective protection of the interests of online shopping consumers, 2014 revision of the "Consumer Protection Law" defined the rights and interests of consumers in the new era; inthe same year, the government issued three laws and regula-tions: "Administrative Measures for Online Trading", "the Guidelines for the Fulfillment of Social Responsibilities by Online Trading Platform Operators " and " the Guidelines for Regulating the Standard Terms of Online Trading Platform contracts"; in 2015, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce issued "the Punishment Measures for The Violations of The Consumer Rights and Interests ", making a more detailed specification on operator behavior. At this stage, establishing a security system to protect the rights and interests of online shopping consumers has the great urgency and important practical significance in our country.Online shopping refers to one form of the electronic commerce, mainly referring to the transaction process-by the B2 C or the C2 C transaction mode, the consumers’ consumption desire is fulfilled and the operators get a piece of the action. In this process, the consumer’s right to know, the right to fair trade, the right to choose on their own and the right of privacy are easily infringed. To protect these rights and interests, we should comply with the three protection principles-the equal protection, the special protection and the comprehensive protection, which are different from others.As for the rights and interests protection of online shopping consumer, many countries such as the United States have established perfect legal protection system. In order to protect the right to know, in the United States "Online Trading Guidelines", all the information in the process of online shopping transactions are required to disclose and the information should be expressed in the appropriate language; in order to protect consumers’ rights to choose on their own, " Uniform Electronic Transactions Act" of American stipulates that businesses can not apply format contracts,which have obscure terms or hide the terms,to force consumers to trade; as to the right of privacy, "Directive 2002/58/EC of The European Parliament and of The Council of 12 July 2002 on Certain Rules Processing of Personal Data and Protecting of Personal Privacy in the Electronic Communications Industry " stipulates that service providers can not send any promotional information to consumer through email, SMS and other ways, unless with the consumers’ "prior consent". In comparison, our country still exist great shortage in the rights and interests protection of online shopping consumers, mainly including the format contract, false advertising, the imperfect regulatory system, the traditional dispute resolution mechanism having limitations, the insufficient punishment to illegal operation, inadequate disclosure of information. In order to guarantee the rapid development of China’s economy, we must strengthen the confidence of the online shopping consumers. We must do the work in these five aspects: perfect the relevant legal system, boost the regulatory mechanism, improve the dispute resolution mechanism, strengthen the responsibility of the network operators, make up the related system. It is a long-term and arduous project to amplify the online shopping consumer rights protection system, which needs the patience and perseverance of the Chinese government and people.