Business to consumer contracts in the electronic marketplace: striking a proper balance between private and public regulatory objectives
type: CreativeWork
description: Internet contracts are increasingly part of the daily lives of most consumers. Consumers enter contracts online for all kinds of common transactions such as the purchase of goods, services, and digital content, and subscription for social media and telecommunication services. The vast majority of online contracts are standard in form, written on the supplier’s terms. Moreover, internet contracting is carried out on a huge scale, with the internet opening up new markets and allowing businesses to offer goods and services across borders. Businesses now have the potential to reach millions of users often on terms that are standardised across industries. The electronic contracting environment gives rise to particular procedural problems for consumers. These problems include issues relating to consent to contract formation, notice and transparency of terms. Consumers are habituated to online contract formation methods and may not realise the significance of the legal terms or may indeed not be aware of the existence of binding terms at all. In addition, particular concerns relating to the substantive fairness of terms and the protection of the collective public interest arise. Mass-market standard form contracts do not just impact upon the parties to individual transactions. Where businesses include standard terms that might be considered substantively unfair, effectively, they are using the mechanism of private contract to try to remove or alter rights that have been put in place through public regulation. Judicial and legislative control of standard terms is largely focused on private contract law redress systems and therefore may not be fully effective in protecting the wider public interest. This thesis critically assesses the effectiveness of existing judicial and legislative control of standard terms in mass-market business to consumer online contracts. It highlights the tension that exists between private and public regulatory objectives in the control of standard…
abstract: Internet contracts are increasingly part of the daily lives of most consumers. Consumers enter contracts online for all kinds of common transactions such as the purchase of goods, services, and digital content, and subscription for social media and telecommunication services. The vast majority of online contracts are standard in form, written on the supplier’s terms. Moreover, internet contracting is carried out on a huge scale, with the internet opening up new markets and allowing businesses to offer goods and services across borders. Businesses now have the potential to reach millions of users often on terms that are standardised across industries. The electronic contracting environment gives rise to particular procedural problems for consumers. These problems include issues relating to consent to contract formation, notice and transparency of terms. Consumers are habituated to online contract formation methods and may not realise the significance of the legal terms or may indeed not be aware of the existence of binding terms at all. In addition, particular concerns relating to the substantive fairness of terms and the protection of the collective public interest arise. Mass-market standard form contracts do not just impact upon the parties to individual transactions. Where businesses include standard terms that might be considered substantively unfair, effectively, they are using the mechanism of private contract to try to remove or alter rights that have been put in place through public regulation. Judicial and legislative control of standard terms is largely focused on private contract law redress systems and therefore may not be fully effective in protecting the wider public interest. This thesis critically assesses the effectiveness of existing judicial and legislative control of standard terms in mass-market business to consumer online contracts. It highlights the tension that exists between private and public regulatory objectives in the control of standard…
author: Gardiner, Caterina
language: en
keywords: Contract, Consumer, E-commerce
license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
date published: 2019
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:47:07Z
provider: University College Cork
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University College Cork

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/10468/7958