Comsumer Protection For Digital Content Transaction Online

The rise of digital content online transaction has become a new economic growth. When the consumers enjoy the convenience of this transaction, it cannot be neglected that many difficulties have come to the consumer protection.Therefore, how to connect the practice of digital content online transaction and legislation is a difficult problem to be solved.Remote transaction has been adjusted in the Article 28 of Law of the PRC on the Protection ofthe Rights and Interests of Consumers,and digital content online transactions surely belong to a kind of remote transaction, so digital content online transactions is in the adjustment range of Law of the PRC on the Protection ofthe Rights and Interests of Consumers.However,digital content is so different from the traditional remote transaction that it is hard to apply the Consumer Protection Law directly.Because it is easy to copy, easy to tamper with, not wasting, diversiform and so on, in the process of building its legal framework, it needs to have a discuss about a series of targeted issues existed. This article is divided into three parts, starting from concluding some thornier issues in the predicament of the consumers’ protection of such transactions, then further making detailed analysis for issues above.The first chapter mainly discusses the plight of digital content online trading of consumer protection. Firstly,whether digital content can be applicable to Law of the PRC on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Consumers.Secondly,the digital 2 contents transactions are difficult to define through the traditional civil law theory.Thirdly,information asymmetry between the seller andconsumers.Fourthly,the consumers of this transaction have no right to withdraw.Fifthly,no corresponding rules on the application of standard terms targeted at this transaction and the form of provison.Sixthly,the lack of methods for consumers to judicial remedy.The second chapter mainly discusses the nature of the digital content and its online transactions.The object of consumer relationship can be divided into "goods" and "service".However, the digital content can often be mixed and diversity,it should be combined with the proportion of physical factors and economic measure to determine the nature of each digital content.The digital content can be divided into the standard digital content and the customized digital content according to whether for lot production.The online transactionofstandarddigitalcontent is similarwith the sales contract.However, due to its characteristics of the continuous supply,it is more close to the contract of the supply of power,water,gas and heat.So it can be classified as a continuous supply contract by its nature.And onlinetransaction of customized digital content is acontract for work.Making clear the nature of digital content and its online transactions can lay a foundation for consumer protection mechanism of such deals.The third chapter mainly discusses how to improve the Law of the PRC on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Consumers to regulation the online transaction of digital content,mainly for the standard digital content.Firstly, the seller shall perform the information disclosure obligation,.And the law should clearly rule the form and time for information disclosure.Secondly,the law should allow consumers to withdraw in this transaction because there is possible to ‘return’ the digital content.However,for the balance of the seller and consumer,the law should rule the applicablescope,condition,duration,etc. Thirdly,the content of format terms and provide ways should have corresponding legal provisions. If theprovision of format clauses deprived the consumer of the rights of information or the substantive right of consumer to use digital content is limited byformat terms, these terms shall be null and void. Fourthly, the consumer may give up the traditional judicial relief because it needs cost so much time and money. Therefore there needs to set up new jurisdiction of rules for such transactions and introduce online consumer disputes settlement mechanism, so as to improve the judicial relief system for consumers in the digital content online trading.Within the legislative framework of consumer law, the author tries tobuild up a targeted consumer protection system for digital contenttransaction in order to further improve the relevant legal system in China and meet the needs of economic and social development of the information age.