Research On The Protection Of The Cinema Consumers’ Interests

As more and more consumers go into the cinema, the cinema advertisement alsobecomes a new focus that movie consumers are concerned about. Before the start of themovie, the frequent cinema advertisements of commodities, medicines, clothing andbeverages and so on make many movie consumers annoyed. The complaints the consumerassociation has received are growing, which even gives rise to lawsuits. At present, therelevant laws and regulations on specification of cinema advertising are insufficient and it isvery hard for the movie consumers to seek a reasonable way to protect their own rights.Therefore, the issue of rights protection is imminent. We should pay more attention to theprotection of the consumers’ rights and the ways in which we can achieve low cost and highefficiency.This paper starts with the analysis of relevant judicial cases and uses the method ofliterature review, case contrast and empirical analysis. With the comprehensive reference tothe domestic scholars’ academic viewpoints, it analyzes the problems in the process ofprotecting the consumers’ rights in four parts. It makes a preliminary discussion on whatspecific consumer rights are violated, the ways of movie consumers’ rights protection and theestablishment of public interest litigation mechanisms. In addition to the introduction, themain body of the paper includes four parts.The first part is the summary of the case. An understanding of the background, reasons,process and result of the case in which the plaintiff lawyer Chen Xiaomei’s legitimate rightsare violated can help us seek a better solution to the issue of rights protection.The second part addresses the legal controversial points in this case. The specific rightsof movie consumers that are prescribed in the economic law and are violated by cinemaadvertisements are the focuses of this dispute. These rights include the consumers’ rights oftheir access to information and their rights of fair dealing. What is corresponding to theconsumers’ access to information is the cinema’s obligation of informing the consumers of thefilm advertisements. The timeout playing of cinema advertisements directly influences themovie consumers’ film watching. Therefore, it is necessary for the cinema to inform themovie consumers beforehand. As to whether the movie consumers could get compensationfor mental damage, this paper will justify the feasibility of mental damage compensation from the perspectives of the psychological needs of movie consumers, the legal basis of mentaldamage compensation and the verdicts of similar cases.The third part is about the protection of present legal system for movie consumers. Theanalysis is mainly focused on the judicial proposal letter issued by the local court in YantaDistrict in the city of Xi’an to Boehner Studios. The protective effects of the judicial proposalletter could not be denied, but it also has a lot of deficiencies such as low response rates, lowquality and unsatisfactory performance. Through integrating theory with practice, the paperattempts to find out why the judicial proposal letter cannot provide enough protection for themovie consumers. The main reason why the judicial proposal letter cannot achieve the judges’expected effects is that it is not stipulated in the law that the advisees shall have the duty torespond. And the judicial proposal letter has neither the legal mandatory power nor theauthority. The effect of the judicial proposal letter is limited and the related supportingmechanism still has a lot of drawbacks, which makes it difficult to achieve obvious effects insolving the group disputes of the cinema consumers in a short span of time. In order to protectthe public interests of the unspecified cinema consumers, we need to explore a new way tosafeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the cinema consumers and provide them abetter way to engage in a lawsuit.The fourth part gives a review to the protection strategies. The main content of this partis about the public interest litigation of cinema consumers, which roughly makes a study fromfour related aspects of startup mechanism, operating mechanism, security mechanism andrelief mechanism. The study of the startup mechanism is focused on the plaintiff qualificationof the public interest litigation. It also states the specific scope of the suit subject in the publicinterest litigation and the justifiability that the widening of the scope in the plaintiffqualification is more beneficial to the protection of public interest. This mechanism has apositive role in protecting the movie consumers’ rights and governing the film advertisements.It is also significant in the protection of public interest. The operating mechanism issubdivided into applicable procedure, request scope, preposition procedure and court decision.A detailed analysis is made on the problems that the court and movie consumers should payattention to in the process of public interest litigation. The mechanism of preventingindiscriminate lawsuits and the incentive mechanism constitute the system design of thesecurity mechanism. In the end, it states the relief mechanism which strengthens thesupervision on how to implement the court decision after winning the lawsuit and also draws the curtain on the lengthy litigation.