A Study On Unreasonable Terms In Internet Service Contract

With the development of the Internet economy, Internet service contract widely existon the Internet. As a kind of standard electronic contract, Internet service contract bringsthe Internet service providers and users a lot of convenience and great risks at the sametime. This article argues that the current legal doctrines are inadequate to protectconsumers in relation to widely existing unreasonable terms in Internet service contract.Then what is unreasonable term? The unreasonable terms in this article can be defined asfollows: they are the terms which contain unfair content, as contract provider fails todistribute contract rights and obligations between parties fairly. However, special law andlegal regulation method are inadequate which can protect the customs againstunreasonable terms. This thesis aims to solve the issue and bring forward a new researchmethod by analyzing the unreasonable terms under the existing legal system according totheir types.In this paper, the main research ideas are as follows:In Part I, this paper introduces the characteristics of Internet service contract, thedefinition of unreasonable terms and the reasons of unreasonable terms existence. Then,this paper introduces some typical relevant cases of unreasonable terms, trying to analyzethe current situation of dealing with the unreasonable terms.In Part II, a number of unreasonable terms of the more egregious types are found inInternet service contract. The main unreasonable terms are as follows: Specific Provision for Future Variation; Service Change, Interruption or Termination Provision; Provision ofAccount Delete, Provision of Jurisdiction, Intermediary Mediation Clause. Finally, theunreasonable terms will be showed clearly through the way of empirical analysis.In Part III, firstly, this paper discusses the fact that how to apply the law aboutunreasonable terms. Secondly, judicial review steps of unreasonable terms in theperspective of judicial control will be discussed. The steps are as follows: Step one, thefact that whether the unreasonable terms are as a part of contract will be probed into; Steptwo, the thesis tries to figure out whether the unreasonable provisions are in violation ofmandatory provisions; the third step, it figures out whether unreasonable provisions are inviolation of the basic principles of civil law. Again, the unreasonable terms can be typedas: revocable unreasonable terms, unreasonable but legal terms, unreasonable and illegalterms.In the conclusion part, the author summarizes the significance of this paper andpoints out some other problems of Internet service contract which fails to discuss in thisarticle.