This unique text deals with the most important legal areas for e-commerce related business in most of the member states in Europe as well as the USA. Topics that are dealt with include: contract law, consumer protection, intellectual property law, unfair competition, antitrust law, liability of providers, money transactions, privacy and data protection.

Significantly revised and expanded, this important book addresses the key pieces of EU legislation in the field of e-commerce, including on consumer rights, copyright, electronic identification, open internet access, electronic payments, competition law and digital content.

Provides a quick and consolidated reference volume for lawyers to the most important European Union legislation for e-business activities.

For many observers, the European Union is mired in a deep crisis. Between sluggish growth; political turmoil following a decade of austerity politics; Brexit; and the rise of Asian influence, the EU is seen as a declining power on the world stage. Columbia Law professor Anu Bradford argues the opposite in her important new book The Brussels Effect: the EU remains an influential superpower that shapes the world in its image. By promulgating regulations that shape the international business environment, elevating standards worldwide, and leading to a notable Europeanization of many important aspects of global commerce, the EU has managed to shape policy in areas such as data privacy, consumer health and safety, environmental protection, antitrust, and online hate speech. And in contrast to how superpowers wield their global influence, the Brussels Effect - a phrase first coined by Bradford in 2012- absolves the EU from playing a direct role in imposing standards, as market forces alone are often sufficient as multinational companies voluntarily extend the EU rule to govern their global operations. The Brussels Effect shows how the EU has acquired such power, why multinational companies use EU standards as global standards, and why the EU's role as the world's regulator is likely to outlive its gradual economic decline, extending the EU's influence long into the future.

Today, global competition obliges companies dealing in international trade to modernize their procedures of delivery in order to minimize the customs burden and simplify the relation with customs authorities. Customs planning is the current option to be effective in the worldwide marketplace. However, customs officials are facing new challenges: they must ensure the smooth flow of trade while applying necessary controls on the one hand, while protecting the health and safety of the Community's citizens on the other. To achieve and maintain the correct balance between these demands, control methods are constantly evolving raising major challenges to those charged with planning and compliance. This book is a highly practical work dealing with the ins and outs of European Union (EU) customs law. Cases of study, jurisprudence and comparative law support the analysis of the different legal tools. The consolidated principles ruling the transactions within WTO Member States applied in EU law offer the readers the opportunity to understand how customs rules can be applied in any customs jurisdiction. Authored by an international tax lawyer with extensive experience enforcing EU customs law as a former member of Italy’s financial police, this handy resource is designed to help the reader stay in compliance with the laws controlling EU importing and exporting while structuring transactions in a business-friendly manner. “This book is a reference work in the customs law field. It deals thoroughly and practically with all the matters that a customs law practitioner would need to know. This book works well both for beginners and experts, since both will find needed information and insight in it.” EU Law Live – Book Review by Darya Budova, Senior Associate, Uría Menéndez

Producers and Consumers in EU E-Commerce Law argues that the European Union is failing adequately to protect consumers' critical interests in the area of e-commerce. The book compares the Union's close protection of producers' critical interests in e-commerce, considered in terms of authorship and of 'domain-identity', with its faltering steps towards protection of consumers' corresponding interests, considered in terms of fair trading, privacy and (on behalf of children) morality. The book assesses the threats posed to those interests, the extent to which self-help can and does neutralise those threats and, as regards any gaps left, the extent to which the Union has stepped into the breach. The argument is important given that surveys show low levels of consumer confidence in European cross-border e-commerce, a motor of integration par excellence.

Offers an account of ODR for consumers in the EU context, presenting a comprehensive investigation of the development of ODR for business to consumer disputes within the EU. This book examines the role of both the European legislator with the Mediation Directive and the English judiciary in encouraging the use of mediation.

The historic European Union Directive on Data Protection will take effect in October 1998. A key provision will prohibit transfer of personal information from Europe to other countries if they lack “adequate” protection of privacy. If enforced as written, the Directive could create enormous obstacles to commerce between Europe and other countries, such as the United States, that do not have comprehensive privacy statutes. In this book, Peter Swire and Robert Litan provide the first detailed analysis of the sector-by-sector effects of the Directive. They examine such topics as the text of the Directive, the tension between privacy laws and modern information technologies, issues affecting a wide range of businesses and other organizations, effects on the financial services sector, and effects on other prominent sectors with large transborder data flows. In light of the many and significant effects of the Directive as written, the book concludes with detailed policy recommendations on how to avoid a coming trade war with Europe. The book will be of interest to the wide range of individuals and organizations affected by the important new European privacy laws. More generally, the privacy clash discussed in the book will prove a major precedent for how electronic commerce and world data flows will be governed in the Internet Age.

This book discusses how technological innovations have affected the resolution of disputes arising from electronic commerce in the European Union, UK and China. Online dispute resolution (ODR) is a form of alternative dispute resolution in which information technology is used to establish a process that is more effective and conducive to resolving the specific types of dispute for which it was created. This book focuses on out-of-court ODR and the resolution of disputes in the field of electronic commerce. It explores the potential of ODR in this specific e-commerce context and investigates whether the current use of ODR is in line with the principles of access to justice and procedural fairness. Moreover, it examines the major concerns surrounding the development of ODR, e.g. the extent to which electronic ADR agreements are recognized by national courts in cross-border e-commerce transactions, how procedural justice is ensured in ODR proceedings, and whether ODR outcomes can be effectively enforced. To this end, the book assesses the current and potential role of ODR in resolving e-commerce disputes, identifies the legal framework for and legal barriers to the development of ODR, and makes recommendations as to the direction in which practice and the current legal framework should evolve. In closing, the book draws on the latest legislation in the field of e-commerce law and dispute resolution in order to make recommendations for future ODR design, such as the EU Platform-to-Business Regulation on Promoting Fairness and Transparency for Business Users of Online Intermediation Services (2019) and the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (2018), which provide the legal basis for ODR’s future development.

This book provides an overview of recent and future legal developments concerning the digital era, to examine the extent to which law has or will further evolve in order to adapt to its new digitalized context. More specifically it focuses on some of the most important legal issues found in areas directly connected with the Internet, such as intellectual property, data protection, consumer law, criminal law and cybercrime, media law and, lastly, the enforcement and application of law. By adopting this horizontal approach, it highlights – on the basis of analysis and commentary of recent and future EU legislation as well as of the latest CJEU and ECtHR case law – the numerous challenges faced by law in this new digital era. This book is of great interest to academics, students, researchers, practitioners and policymakers specializing in Internet law, data protection, intellectual property, consumer law, media law and cybercrime as well as to judges dealing with the application and enforcement of Internet law in practice.