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Digital consumer and user rights in EU policy

Published: 19 August 2008 Publication History

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.

References

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T. Moran. What's Bugging the Hi-Tech Car? The New York Times, February 2005.
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BMELV. Charter on Consumer Sovereignty in the Digital World. http://www.bmelv.de/cln_044/nn_757130/SharedDocs/downloads/__EN/03- ConsumerProtection/CharterDig,templateId=raw,property=publicationFile.pdf/CharterDig.pdf
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N. Helberger, P. B. Hugenholtz. No Place Like Home for Making a Copy: Private Copying in European Copyright Law and Consumer Law. BTLJ, 22, 3 (2007), 1061--1098.
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S. Weatherill. EU consumer law and policy. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA, 2005.
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http://europa.eu/scadplus/glossary/community_acquis_en.htm
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N. Reich. Protection of Consumers' Economic Interests by EC Contract Law---Some Follow-up Remarks. SydLRev, 28, 1 (2006), 37.
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COM(2006) 744 Green Paper on the Review of Consumer Acquis.
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V. Oksanen, M. Välimäki. Enforcing Consumer Protection Interest in Copyright -- A Comparison of United States and Europe. In Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues Annual Congress 2007 (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 12 and 13 July 2007), 2007, 1.
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Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market.
[10]
Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market; EC Directive.
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Preparatory Work for the Impact Assessment on the Review of the Consumer Acquis - DG HEALTH AND CONSUMER PROTECTION - Analytical Report on the Green Paper on the Review of the Consumer Acquis submitted by the Consumer Policy Evaluation Consortium. (06/11/2007). Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/rights/detailed_analysis_en.pdf
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http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/cons_int/safe_shop/fair_bus_pract/cont_law/common_frame_ref_en.htm
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European Parliament resolution of 6 September 2007 on the Green Paper on the review of the Consumer Acquis
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Bernt Hugenholtz {2000} EIPR 11, p. 501--502. Why the Copyright Directive is Unimportant, and Possibly Invalid. EIPR, 11 (2000), 501.
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Littoz-Monnet A. Copyright in the EU: droit d'auteur or right to copy? Journal of European Public Policy, 13, 3 (2006), 438.
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The Green Book (1988)
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J. Litman. Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet. Prometheus Books, Amherst, N.Y., 2001.
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D. McGowan. Some Copyright Consumer Conundrums. In Consumer Protection in the Age of the 'Information Economy'. Edited by Jane K. Winn. Hampshire; Ashgate Publishing Limited. 2006, 155.
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R. Watt. Copyright and economic theory: friends or foes? E. Elgar, Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA, 2000.
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Norwegian Consumer Council 2007
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Directive 2001/29/EC (Infosoc Directive)
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The Database Directive (96/9/EEC)
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Computer Software Directive (91/250/EEC)
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DG Information Society & Media. Public Consultation on Content Online in the Single Market. (July 2006).
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DG Internal Market and Services. Stakeholder Consultation on Copyrights Levies in a Converging world. (JUNE 2006).

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    ICEC '08: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Electronic commerce
    August 2008
    355 pages
    ISBN:9781605580753
    DOI:10.1145/1409540
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 19 August 2008

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    Author Tags

    1. European union
    2. consumers
    3. contracts
    4. copyright

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    ICEC08
    ICEC08: 10th International Conference on E-Commerce
    August 19 - 22, 2008
    Innsbruck, Austria

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