Legal aspects of some internet marketing instruments

Abstract

The development of the Internet and sophisticated search engines such as e.g. Google together with the spread of social networks have introduced new marketing possibilities of addressing potential clients with offer of goods and services. Unlike most traditional marketing procedures, these instruments allow for targeting the business information directly at concrete individuals, taking into consideration their age, sex, education, hobbies. All this is based on their choice of words keyed into the search engines. This is the targeted advertising where consumer response can be accurately measured, e.i. the so called context advertising.The purpose of this paper is to analyse the legal aspects of some of the above mentioned internet marketing instruments, as even in this sphere legal regulation clearly lags behind the dynamically developing possibilities of the Internet as a means of communication. These marketing methods being viewed from the perspective of valid laws, several problem areas may be detected, which concern the right of privacy protection of natural person, intellectual property, or legal regulation of implied or unsolicited advertising.This paper concentrates on the summary of rules of law which regulate internet users privacy protection with respect to the Czech and Community laws, assessment of their efficiency and de lege ferenda discretion.