Internet Court Research Articles

Can Online Courts Promote Access to Justice? A Case Study of the Internet Courts in China

The right to access the courts is a basic human right in civilised societies, but the current legal system is unfriendly and often unaffordable for the victims of e-commerce disputes and copyright infringements seeking access to justice. Therefore, how to design a judicial system that is more accessible for the aforementioned victims has become a critical legal point of contention in the digital economy era. In particular, it is not easy to provide solid evidence of consumer disputes or copyright infringements on the Internet because the electronic evidence stored on the current centralised database has data security and trust problems. In response to this challenge, China established three Internet Courts in 2017 to move dispute resolution for e-commerce disputes and copyright infringements from the physical courts to the Internet. All the proceedings in these Internet Courts are conducted on the Internet, so the time and expenses of the litigants can be largely reduced. Most notably, these Internet Courts accept the use of blockchain as a method of securing evidence, to overcome the risks that evidence stored on the Internet can be hacked or falsified. The notion of an Internet Court, which substantially enhances popular access to justice, is a significant judicial innovation. It is of special significance for those lawsuits with small value claims and online evidence, and in which the parties are separated by long distances. However, these Internet Courts leave much to reflect on, including whether due process can be guaranteed, whether public trial can be fully implemented, and whether blockchain-based evidence is absolutely admissible. Even so, this article argues that true justice is not only to pursue absolute correctness of judgements, but that true justice should also strike a balance between the correctness and efficiency of trials. For this reason, Internet Courts may yet establish a new judicial paradigm to pursue a balance between correctness, time, and cost.

Transformative Digital Economy, Responsive Regulatory Innovation and Contingent Network Effects: The Anatomy of E-Commerce Law in China

Digital economy in the past decades has witnessed an explosive growth momentum in China. Arguably, China has now become the leader in many fronts of global innovative digital economy. This paper fills the academic gap by explicating the evolution of one of the prime constituents of digital economy, the electronic commerce (E-commerce) sector, and its accompanying regulatory paradigm. It is opined that the explosive market development has instigated a new governance model in China. This model features innovative, participatory and collaborative regulatory approaches. It represents a polycentric paradigm facilitating technological, industrial and regulatory innovation. It is argued that such industrial and regulatory innovation casts profound implications not only cross-sectionally on many other digital economy industries within China, but also trans-nationally on global governance of innovation economy as evidenced in the ongoing clash between China and the US. Digital Economy, Electronic Commerce, Network Effects, New Governance, Coregulation Framework, Industrial Standards, Consumer Protection, Data Privacy, Blockchain Technology, Internet Court

The integration of modern digital technologies to the legal proceedings of People’s Republic of China and Singapore

The article presents the author's view on the ongoing changes in civil proceedings in China and Singapore, primarily the active introduction of innovative information and telecommunications technologies in the dispute resolution process. The author assesses the results of China's judicial reform, highlighting the main features of this process, and Singapore's approach to integrating digital technologies into legal proceedings. Legal regulation of new objects of law, both procedural and substantive law, is analyzed .The author believes that China's approach is the most progressive and effective:1) creation of the world's first Internet courts, where all production is carried out online using innovative technologies: artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud technologies; as well as 2) public policy, in which digital technologies are progressively integrated into all spheres of public life, various programs and strategies are adopted, the achievement of which is considered as the task of the whole society, not of specific individuals

Case translation: China

Hangzhou Huatai Yimei Culture Media Co., Ltd. v. Shenzhen Daotong Technology Development Co., Ltd. (2018) Zhe 0192 Civil Case, First Court No. 81, Hangzhou Internet Court of the People’s Republic of China, 27 June 2018
 China; intellectual property infringement; authenticity of electronic evidence; screenshot of webpage; SHA256 hash value; blockchain related evidence; Bitcoin block chain; integrity of evidence; law of electronic signatures

Beijing Internet Court denies copyright to works created solely by artificial intelligence

Abstract Beijing Feilin Law Firm v Baidu Corporation, No 239 [2019], Civil First Instance, Beijing Internet Court, 25 April 2019

Research on the Mode of Online Administrative Litigation under the Background of "Internet +": A Case Study of Hangzhou Internet Court

The development of e-commerce economy has led to the emergence of new types of legal relationships. The promotion of administrative litigation models should be an approach to promote strengths and avoid weaknesses, whether online or offline. Exploring the advantages of the online litigation model can speed up the processing rate of administrative cases. Relying on big data will also help trial judges accurately locate administrative litigation cases and save judicial resources. Under the background of "Internet +", how to make full use of big data to further advance the online litigation model and solve the problems in judicial practice has become an urgent priority.

중국 인터넷 법원의 구축 : 검토와 전망

인터넷의 발전으로 인하여 초래하는 “인터넷 분쟁”은 갈수록 빈번해지고 있으며, 이를 해결하는데 어려움이 존재한다. 이에 근거하여 중국은 인터넷 법원을 설립하였다. 인터넷 법원의 탐색은 두 가지 단계를 거쳤고, 그리고 유익한 경험을 축척하였다. 하지만 이런 두 가지 단계의 탐색은 모두 인터넷 법원의 기본적인 위치·구축 방법 및 주위 경계를 명확하게 하지 않았다. 이것은 중국 인터넷 법원의 탐색을 혼란스럽고 맹목적으로 드러나게 하였다.BR 미래 중국 인터넷 법원의 구축은 상술한 문제들을 직시하고, 인터넷 법원이 “인터넷 분쟁”에 대한 전속관할권을 명확히 하고, 또한 이에 근거하여 인터넷 법원의 독특한 역할과 정확한 위치를 분명하게 정리해야 한다. 다시 말하면, 인터넷 법원의 구축 중에서 인터넷 사유를 견지해야 하며, 인터넷 사유로 전통적인 사법 관념의 제한을 돌파하여 인터넷 법원의 구축을 지도한다. 그 밖에 주의하여야 할 것은 인터넷 법원의 경계이며, 사법공개메커니즘을 이용하여 법관이 인터넷 법원 중의 직권에 대항함으로써 당사자주의가 인터넷 법원에 대한 구속을 보장한다.

Construction of Online Dispute Resolution Mechanism---Chinese Internet Court Under Comparative Law

In the information age, the Internet has become an integral part of social life. With the rapid development of e-commerce industry, more and more e-commerce disputes are happening. Whether these problems can be solved quickly will seriously affect the normal operation and healthy development of the Internet industry. Therefore, Internet courts emerge as the times require. This paper puts forward an online dispute resolution mechanism, which has gained valuable experience from the legislation and practice of Internet courts in the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, and provides a reference for the development of Internet courts in China. Since 2000, China has been trying to resolve disputes through the Internet. It has gone through three stages, what is, recognition and exploration, establishment of pilot projects, expansion of pilot projects and promotion of pilot projects. Although great progress has been made in the construction of network courts in China in terms of legal norms and technical application, there are still many internal problems. In the future, professional person should start with perfecting laws and regulations, upgrading technology and training future talents, so that the network court can become the “test ground” and “demonstration area” of the comprehensive reform of the judicial system and the reform of the network governance mode. professional person need to cultivate new judicial momentum, also use new momentum to promote the new development of intelligent court construction, as professional personll as create new brilliance of judicial cause with new development.

Recent Development of Internet Courts in China

Recent Development of Internet Courts in China

Gore, Gibson, and Goldsmith: The Evolution of Internet Metaphors in Law and Commentary

This paper addresses the evolution of metaphors for the Internet and shows how they have constrained and determined the development of cyberlaw. Within the law, metaphors mold the framework of discourse, determining the scope of appropriate questions about and answers to various social and legal problems. Courts and commentators employ metaphors as heuristics to generate hypotheses about the application of law to novel, unexplored domains. Metaphors structure the way lawyers conceptualize legal events, as they infiltrate, consciously and unconsciously, legal discourse. Under the classic formalist view of common law analogy as syllogism, analogical reasoning from precedent begins with the establishment of a rule behind a case or group of similar cases. Judges then apply the rule fairly mechanically to the case at hand to yield a result that is understood through the background of precedent. In contrast to figurative literary metaphors, highly structured analogical, metaphorical mappings may be used to make persuasive, logical arguments. Like all metaphors, however, legal metaphors possess a paradoxical quality, embodied in the constant tension between the legal metaphor's literal incongruence and metaphorical congruence with reality. Metaphors whose metaphorical congruence with reality is perceived as dominant, such as the marketplace of ideas metaphor in First Amendment jurisprudence and the bundle of sticks metaphor in Takings clause jurisprudence, will continue to have analogical value and will be perpetuated through judicial opinion and scholarly commentary. Conversely, legal metaphors erceived as having greater literal incongruence with reality, such as the slavery metaphor of African Americans as chattels, will lose their value and be discarded. While metaphors aid humans in comprehending abstract concepts and legal doctrines, they also may limit human understanding by selectively highlighting various aspects of an issue while suppressing and marginalizing others. Unreflective use of metaphors can lead lawyers to take for granted the realities that metaphors enable. A bad metaphor can also simply lead to bad decision making. For example, Cass Sunstein argues that the marketplace of ideas metaphor has turned the right to free expression into a degraded form of commerce. This paper seeks to explore the evolution of metaphorical inferences as applied to the Internet within legal commentary and judicial opinions. Three metaphors in particular will be examined: the information superhighway, cyberspace, and the Internet as real space. Given the Internet's ongoing evolution as an unstable and ever-changing technology, courts and commentators have faced perpetual difficulty in mapping metaphors to it. Changing social constructions of the Internet as necessitated by its evolving underlying technological architecture have supported, or conversely eroded, a particular metaphor's literal congruence with reality. The purpose of this paper to make transparent the different conceptions of the Internet courts and commentators are sub silentio employing, and the various sociological, technological, and ideological conceptions of the world that support them.