Research On The Legal Regulation Of Bundled Installation Of Internet Terminal Software

The advent of the Internet era brings diverse development opportunities to the operators, and also gives consumers a variety of new experience. Nevertheless, the existing fragile and tense relations between operators and consumers is more vulnerable under the Internet environment. Operators are more likely to use dominant positions to violate consumers' legitimate rights and interest or put it at risk. Due to the rapid development of the Internet, Internet terminal software industry as an important part of the Internet market is booming. New types of software are constantly developed, and the functions of Software are constantly upgraded. Progress in these areas does allow consumers to share the benefit and convenience of high-tech. With the consumers' increasing dependence on the Internet and Internet terminal software, the operators' behaviors infringing legitimate rights and interest of consumers begin to emerge. The number of software consumers is very important for software operators. In order to contend for user resources and software markets, some operators take improper bundled installation ways to generalize their own software. This makes consumers can not freely dominate the installation and uninstaller of software. In addition, some types of bundled software have many malicious effect in the aspects of effect of the security of internet terminals, illegal collection and use of personal information of consumers, and unfair distribution of rights and obligations by use of standard terms and etc.That can lead to varying degrees of violation of consumers' right to choose, right to make fair dealings, right to know, right of safety and etc. In the software market that the software operators have strong positions, due to the imperfection of relevant rules and regulations, the legitimate rights and interests of consumers are at stake. Therefore, this paper selects the perspective of consumer protection, and discusses and analyses the problem of consumer infringement of the bundled installation of Internet terminal software. At last, this paper puts forward some countermeasures of improving the legal regulation in this field. It aims to attract the due attention of the theoretical and practical circles on the protection of consumers' rights and interests about the bundled installation of software.Apart from the introduction and conclusion parts, this paper mainly consists of the following four parts:Part I: The overview of the legal regulation of bundled installation of Internet terminal software. First, the part makes an interpretation of the concept of Internet terminal software and the bundled installation of Internet terminal software. Secondly, the part makes behavior essence and benefit direction as the main content and does qualitative analysis of the bundled installation of Internet terminal software. Finally, based on the two layers of the principle of good faith and the theory of consumer sovereignty, this part explains that it is necessary and urgent to protect the legitimate rights and interests of software consumer and regulate the bundled installation chaos of Internet terminal software. That makes a reasonable theoretical foundation for the study of this paper.Part II: The weak positions of consumers in the process of the bundled installation of Internet terminal software. This part closely combines with the research perspective of this paper, and explains consumers' weak positions in the process of the bundled installation of Internet terminal software from two basic points. These two basic points include factors that restrict the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and the performances of infringing upon the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. That highlights the specificity of the infringement of consumers' rights and interests in the process of the bundled installation of Internet terminal software.Part III: The current situation of the legal regulation of the bundled installation of Internet terminal software in China. This part is the inductive analysis of important laws, department rules, self-discipline conventions that are related to the bundled installation of Internet terminal software. Furthermore, this part points out the factors that are not adapted to the legal regulation of the bundled installation of Internet terminal software. On the basis of understanding the current situation of regulation, this part summarizes practical dilemmas faced by the legal regulation of the bundled installation of Internet terminal software in China.Part IV: Countermeasures of improving the legal regulation of the bundled installation of Internet terminal software in China. According to the existing problems of the legal regulation of the bundled installation of Internet terminal software, this part points out on the basis of improving the legal regulation basis of the bundled installation of Internet terminal software, administrative supervision should be strengthened to supervise and correct the illegal behaviors of software operators. A reasonable litigation system should be built to provide relief channels for the victims, and the level of software industry self-discipline should be improved to reduce the infringement acts of software operators. A multi-layer and multi-angle legal regulation system can be eventually formed to achieve the overall protection of the consumers' legitimate rights and interests of bundled installation of Internet terminal software.