Producers and consumers in EU e-commerce law

Abstract:

E-commerce will play a major part in European integration but that role will be lessened if the European Community fails to protect consumers’ interests with the same vigour that it shows on behalf of producers. This book seeks to support that viewpoint.

The work is organised over five substantive chapters wrapped around by an introduction and conclusion. Chapter two opens the first part of the argument to show serious flaws in the Community’s protection of consumers’ fair trading interests. Chapter three turns to the failures to protect consumers’ privacy and points to gaps in the framework for the Internet. Consumers’ moral interests and Community support for consumer self-help in the areas of suitable content for minors is examined in chapter four.

Part two of the argument to show how the Community acts to protect producers’ interests opens in chapter five, which contrasts the comprehensive protection to authorship interests in e-commerce through the Information Society Directive with the inadequacies of consumer protection detailed in earlier chapters. Chapter six offers similar contrasts in relation to Domain Identity Interests which are also tied into a broad international framework, as are those of authorship interests. Chapter seven draws together the arguments made in earlier chapters and substantiates those with details from the research findings.

The book will interest scholars, students, researchers, policy makers and practitioners engaged in e-commerce and integration issues.

John Dickie is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Leicester.