Digital consumer and user rights in EU policy

Abstract

The main source of consumer surplus is in transition from mechanical devices to software and other digital content. The current dualistic consumer protection scheme, which means adequate protection for physical goods and almost non-existent protection for software and other digital content, will not be sustainable in the long run. To make the situation more complicated, questions pertaining to the rights of users of copyrighted content are increasingly important as the regulation forms another framework with direct relevance for consumer protection---both software and content are typically protected with copyright.In this paper, we first look into the digital rights concept. Moreover, we illustrate what the protection of consumers' economic interests can mean in context with consumers' digital rights. For this reason, we review how digital consumer and user rights are protected in the existing Consumer Acquis. Then, we analyse ongoing discussions about revising directives to make them better suited to the needs of information society. Further, we study copyright law as a case to determine how consumer rights are secured outside the core regulations of consumer protection.We conclude that Digital Consumer Rights is an elusive topic to cover because of its vagueness. Nevertheless, it seems that the concept is slowly getting a hard core also inside EU's regulatory bodies. This is most obvious inside the Consumer Acquis but the discourse is slowly moving to other areas. We argue that in dealing with consumers' economic interests in digital environment the issue of copyright law cannot be ignored. Consequently, we suggest some improvements to the relevant Directives.