Open AccessThe effectiveness of French contract law in the face of Internet giants
Author(s) -
Gilles Pillet
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
revista de direito, estado e telecomunicações
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.188
H-Index - 3
eISSN - 1984-9729
pISSN - 1984-8161
DOI - 10.26512/lstr.v11i1.24857
Subject(s) - law , business , the internet , consumer protection , order (exchange) , exclusion clause , frustration of purpose , service (business) , face (sociological concept) , subject (documents) , choice of law , privity of contract , political science , contract management , conflict of laws , sociology , computer science , commerce , finance , marketing , social science , world wide web , library science
Purpose – The article analyzes the French contract law in order to assess its usefulness to provide regulatory means of the big techs. It shows that the recent reforms of the French contract law have not been able to empower the consumers and result in a stronger protection against abuse.
Methodology/approach/design – The article evaluates the contractual relations between the big techs and their users, with a special regard to the French law (general contract law, the commercial law, and the consumer law). It demonstrates the limits of the general contract law due to the complexity of the contractual subject, named as Internet service. In addition, the article assesses the means of protection: liberty to contract, codes of conduct, and, judicial lawsuits.
Findings – The article concludes that the French contract law will only be able to offer effective protective results by benefitting the Internet users if there is an increase of the collective lawsuits, filed by consumers´ protection groups or by state agencies like the Ministry of the Economy. Two other solutions exist, such as codes of conduct and the recognition of more liberty to the users. However, they both have specific limitations to produce effective results.