Substantive Mechanisms for Achieving Access to Justice

Abstract

Many consumer transactions are often characterized by unfairness for reasons including the use of misleading advertising, the provision of goods of poor or defective quality and the unauthorized use of personal data. Many laws and regulations have been introduced on the grounds of protecting consumers against these types of deceptive and unfair practices, requiring traders to treat all consumers fairly. As is the case with traditional transactions, consumers in the online market are also often faced with these unfair practices. However, there are other unfair practices in B2C e-transactions that are even more difficult for many consumers to deal with because of the associated advanced technology that created the transnational environment for such e-transactions. With its unique characteristics including the absence of national boundaries and the speed of communication, the emergence of today’s e-market has transformed the procedures and manners of conducting business and allowed unfair commercial practices to occur more easily as traders manipulate technology to their advantage. A question arises as to how well the existing consumer protection mechanisms can cope with advanced information technology and the fast changing environment of the online market. A lack of effective tools for dealing with these problems would lead a large number of consumers to refrain from participating in e-transactions, resulting in B2C e-commerce not achieving its full potential.