개정 전자상거래소비자보호법상의 통신판매중개자의 지위와 책임

Abstract

The Electronic Commerce Consumer Protection Act enacted on 2002 in Korea. Over recent years, large increases of online service platforms including based on mobile contents platforms, have caused consumer damages. Regarding various problems of consumer contracts, the main issues are those: what is demanded roles of E-intermediaries in online market, how to divide a wide range of E-intermediaries who function different roles in the e-market to a common category, or what are responsibilities of E-intermediaries based on Electronic Commerce Consumer Protection Act. As a matter of fact, it is various to state E-intermediary’s roles :data processing and web-hosting sector, internet search engines and portals sector, web e-commerce sector etc. We should closely scrutinize their functions how far they concern with a consumer contract on their web-site. inside. For a purpose of determining whether E-intermediary is entitled to protection from E-market liability under Electronic Commerce Consumer Protection Act, I suggest that we should figure out whether an E-intermediary is get involved to a consumer contract on the web-site. If the E-intermediary is simply connect to another web-site and merely shows some information to consumers for researching a better one, then it should not be imposed the same responsibility with who is involved a consumer contract with various ways. Even though a legal status of an E-intermediary is a third party, not a contract party on a consumer contract on the web-site, unfortunately, a general consumer cannot easily aware who is the direct party when he or she forms a contract due to an E-intermediary’s advertisement or their involvements to the contracts in certain cases. A revised 2016 Electronic Commerce Consumer Protection Act proscribes the belows. First, this new article 20 classifies a general E-intermediary and a commercial E-intermediary. Thus, the former E-intermediary should provide certain information of the other party’s, such as name, address, etc, to a consumer get aware of the other party of a contract. On the other hands, the latter commercial E-intermediary has a duty of inform to a consumer before offering is achieved. Enormous advertisements are enough to get consumer’s misrepresentation for a direct party of a contract. Even taking into account social awareness changes on E-intermediary, a consumer still has a right to be noticed that who is a real party on his or her contract not to be confused by an easier recognizable way. On top of that, a new enacted article 20.3 shows if an E-intermediary participates in a crucial role in a consumer contract, he should act on behalf of the contract party in a case of the contract party is not perform certain acts. The role of importance of E-intermediary is determined by those: i) if E-intermediary receives a payment from a consumer, or ii) if E-intermediary gets acceptances of a contract on his web-site. I partly agree that the neutrality is one of the crucial elements for managing an online-platform. However, unlike offline markets, E-markets have distinguishing features there are no spaces constraints for sellers, numbers of consumers, or time limitation for accessing the market from consumers. An E-intermediary provides unbalanced information for his or her own profits rather has a neutrality for the market. Even it sometimes looks like a strong responsibility is imposed to E-intermediary by the Act, I believe imposing an liability on an E-intermediary who gets involved a consumer contract on his or her web-site. it is an inevitable consequence for consumer protection based on those features of e-market.