Legal Protection Of Online Consumers’ Rights

With the development of the age, a large number of online consumers have emerged. The legal profession have focused on the topic of how to protect the right of online consumers. This article is devided into four parts:The first part:Understanding some concepts about online consumers. To protect their rights, we must know some concepts about online consumers. It is a key problem that how to define "online consumers" because the anwer would affect the subject of legal protection.The second part:The present situation of the network consumer rights protection in China. The protection of the rights of online consumers isn’t quite good. We don’t have perfect measures to protect their fair trade rights so that they are difficult to obtain accurate measurement of goods. What’s more, some format contracts provided by some online operator are not fair. We don’t have perfect measures to protect their right of internet privacy so that the leak phenomenon of their personal information, IP address, and password is increasing. We don’t have perfect measures to protect their right to know, the exist of fake advertisements have a bad influence on the protection. We don’t have perfect measures to protect their rights of retiming. The operators have the final decision on refund or not. What’s more, who will pay the return postage become a question. We don’t have perfect measures to protect their right of action. Jurisdiction disorder, high cost and difficulties of proof affect their right of action.The third part:The institution defects and practiacal problems of protecting online consumers. The laws and regulations which can protect online consumers at present are fragmented. We don’t have specialized law to protect their rights, the laws about electronic platform are still in the basic aspects as well as lacking of international. The characteristic of international is important to the laws that can regulate network trades behavior because network is across space. So, it is important to strengthen international cooperation and resolve the conflict of jurisdiction. The legal system of protecting online consumers isn’t perfect such as the lack of online format contract regulating. Privacy protection and right to know system is not perfect, the rules of returning are not the same as well as the existing deficiencies of present legal remedy system. In addion, our country also has some relistic problem about protecting the rights of online consumers. For example, there isn’t any self-discipline in this industry as well as lacking of daily supervision. What’s more, online consumers are lacking of awareness of self protection.The forth part:Perfecting the measures of protecting online consumers. According to the existing problems, it is very necessary to make a specialized law that which can protect online consumers’ rights and interests. In legislation, first of all, we should define the subjects of rights and obligations and focus on protecting online consumers’rights. This law should also have the charateristic of international. We must adopt strong measures to solve these problems pertinently, for example, regulating that the online opertators should obey the duty to disclosure information, the third-party network platforms should obey the duty of examination. Besides, the measures such as regulating the deadline and scope of retiming goods, banding a Online Consumers Associton will have a good influence on protecting online consumers’rights. Establishing self-discipline in this industry, strengthening daily supervision and increasing online consumers’awareness of self protection are also good ideas.