This collection of essays by well known specialists in e-commerce and Internet law, drawn from both academe and practice, analyses recent crucial legislation which has created, for the first time, a legal regime governing European electronic commerce. The central focus is on the European Electronic Commerce Directive and its implementation in the UK since August 2002. The E-Commerce Directive develops a distinctive European strategy for regulating and promoting on-line business and the information society. Areas of the Directive analysed include contracting on-line, Internet service provider liability, consumer privacy including spam and 'cookies', country of origin regulation, and on-line alternative dispute resolution (ODR). Further chapters move beyond the Directive to discuss other important new laws in this domain, including the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, the Distance Selling Directives, the Electronic Money Directive, the Lawful Business regulations on employee surveillance, the disability discrimination rules affecting websites and the extension of VAT to on-line transactions. Both the European framework and the rules as implemented in the UK are examined and critiqued for how well they meet the needs of business and consumers.

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.

For the last twenty years the European Union has been extremely active in the field of e-commerce. This important new book addresses the key pieces of EU legislation in the field of e-commerce, including the E-commerce Directive, the Services Directive, the Consumer Directive, the General Data Protection Regulation, and the eID Regulation. The latest in the Elgar Commentaries series, EU Regulation of E-Commerce is the first book to apply this well-established format to a dynamic and increasingly significant area of law.

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

2011 Updated Reprint. Updated Annually. Europe E-commerce Business Handbook

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

This book provides an accessible introduction to selected new issues in transnational law, and connects them to existing theoretical debates on transnational business regulation. More specifically, (i) it introduces the argument about the evolving character of contemporary international business regulation; (ii) it provides an overview of some of the main fields of law that are currently important for firms that operate across borders; and (iii) it sets out an interpretive framework for making sense of disparate developments occurring across a number of jurisdictions, among which are the form of regulation and style of enforcement, issues of legal certainty, and behavioural aspects of regulation. The selected topics are indicative of some key issues confronting businesses looking to operate across national borders, as well as policy makers seeking to introduce and enforce meaningful regulatory standards in an increasingly global society. Topics include: consumer law; product liability; warranty law and obsolescence; collective redress; alternative dispute resolution; corporate wrongdoing; corporate governance; and e-commerce. This timely work offers a novel perspective on transnational business law and examines a range of legal issues that preoccupy companies operating transnationally. This book is intended not only for law students looking for an introduction, overview or commentary on the contemporary state of international business law, but also for anyone looking for an introduction to the regulation of business in a global, inter-connected economy.

In this, the fourth edition of Private International Law and the Internet, Professor Dan Svantesson provides a detailed and insightful account of what has emerged as the most crucial current issue in private international law; that is, how the Internet affects and is affected by the five fundamental questions: When should a lawsuit be entertained by the courts? Which state’s law should be applied? When should a court that can entertain a lawsuit decline to do so? How wide ‘scope of jurisdiction’ should be afforded to a court with jurisdiction over a dispute? And will a judgment rendered in one country be recognized and enforced in another? Professor Svantesson identifies and investigates twelve characteristics of Internet communication that are relevant to these questions and then proceeds with a detailed discussion of what is required of modern private international law rules. Focus is placed on several issues that have far-reaching practical consequences in the Internet context, including the following: cross-border defamation; cross-border business contracts; cross-border consumer contracts; and cross-border intellectual property issues. A wide survey of private international law solutions encompasses insightful and timely analyses of relevant laws adopted in a variety of jurisdictions, including Australia, England, Hong Kong SAR, the United States, Germany, Sweden, and China, as well as in a range of international instruments. There is also a chapter on advances in geo-identification technologies and their special value for legal practice. The book concludes with two model international conventions, one on cross-border defamation and one on cross-border contracts, as well as a set of practical checklists to guide legal practitioners faced with cross-border matters within the discussed fields. Professor Svantesson’s book brings together a wealth of research findings in the overlapping disciplines of law and technology that will be of particular utility to practitioners and academics working in this complex and rapidly changing field. His thoughtful analysis of the interplay of the developing Internet and private international law will also be of great value, as will the tools he offers with which to anticipate the future. Private International Law and the Internet provides a remarkable stimulus to continue working towards globally acceptable private international law rules for communication via the Internet.

Criminal law can no longer be neatly categorised as the product and responsibility of domestic law. That this is true is emphasised by the ever-increasing amount of legislation stemming from the European Union (EU) which impacts, both directly and indirectly, on the criminal law. The involvement of the EU institutions in the substantive criminal laws of its Member States is of considerable legal and political significance. This book deals with the emerging EU framework for creating, harmonising and ensuring the application of EU criminal law. This book aims to highlight some of the consequences of EU involvement in the criminal law by examining the provisions which have been adopted in the field of information and communications technology. It provides an overview of the criminal law competence of the EU and evaluates the impact of these developments on the criminal laws of the Member States. It then goes on to consider the EU legislation which requires Member States to regulate matters such as data protection, e-security, intellectual property and various types of illegal content through the criminal law is analysed. In the course of this evaluation, particular consideration is given to issues such as the basis on which the EU institutions establish the need for criminal sanctions, the liability of service providers and the extent to which the Member States have adhered to, or departed from, the legislation in the course of implementation.

In his remarkable, path-breaking new book, Peter Sparkes takes stock of the development of a distinctive body of European land law, taking as his starting point the idea that methods of land-holding permitted by a legal system both shape and reflect the attitudes of the land owners and society in general. However it quickly becomes very difficult to test that idea when the society in question is governed by an internal market composed of 30 countries (the EU-27, including Bulgaria and Romania, and the EEA-3), whose property systems differ so markedly and which reflect such widely differing cultures. Yet the internal market has already effected a gradual equalisation and standardisation across Europe as foreign capital spreads to create equality of yield. "We all become better off by joining a larger trading block but the social consequences will be profound: Brits will need to emigrate to the continent to afford a home, Bulgarians will need to make way for them along the Black Sea coast, and title deeds will be reshuffled all over Europe on a giant Monopoly board" writes the author in his preface, before embarking on a dispassionate examination of the beginning of that process of profound change. The opening chapters are devoted to an explanation of how the internal market has created a substantive European land law. Chapter 3 examines the rise of a distinctive European land law, and the development of conflicts principles applying to recovery of land. Chapters 5 to 9 on the marketing and sale of land focus upon Community competence on consumer protection. The decision to treat land as a product like any other in the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive will have wide ranging and far reaching implications and, apart from marketing of land and of timeshares, other chapters deal with conveyancing, contracting and the emerging market in mortgage credit. The book concludes with a miscellany of conflicts rules which are gradually coalescing and form the elements from which a substantive European land law can be forged. A number of topics which it is not possible to cover in detail (VAT, other taxes, environmental controls and agriculture) are touched on briefly, and the same is true of international aspects of trusts and succession.