Consumer Protection in Cyberspace

Consumer Protection in Cyberspace

There is no special statute regarding protection of cyber consumers in India. For the protection of consumers our parliament has enacted Consumer Protection Act, 1986.Sub-section (d) of section 2 of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 defines consumer which says “consumer” means any person who—

 (i) buys any goods for a consideration which has been paid or promised or partly paid and partly promised, or under any system of deferred payment and includes any user of such goods other than the person who buys such goods for consideration paid or promised or partly paid or partly promised, or under any system of deferred payment when such use is made with the approval of such person, but does not include a person who obtains such goods for resale or for any commercial purpose; or

(ii) hires or avails of any services for a consideration which has been paid or promised or partly paid and partly promised, or under any system of deferred payment and includes any beneficiary of such services other than the person who ‘hires or avails of the services for consideration paid or promised, or partly paid and partly promised, or under any system of deferred payment, when such services are availed of with the approval of the first mentioned person but does not include a person who avails of such services for any commercial purposes; 

Explanation — For the purposes of this clause, “commercial purpose” does not include use by a person of goods bought and used by him and services availed by him exclusively for the purposes of earning his livelihood by means of self-employment. 

This section applies to cyber consumers also because there is no basic difference between cyber consumer and ordinary consumer. Differences occur in the medium of availing and hiring goods and services. Ordinary consumer goes to market for purchasing goods and availing services but in later case it is done via computer. Thus cyber consumer is a consumer who hires goods and avail services through the internet for consideration. Consideration is something of value. A person who obtains goods or availing services free does not come under the definition of consumer. 

Section 2(i) of The Consumer Protection Act, 1986 defines goods which says “goods” means goods as defined in The Sale of Goods Act, 1930.Section 2(7) of The Sale of Goods Act, 1930 defines goods as every kind of movable property other than actionable claim and money; and includes stock and shares, growing crops, grass and things attached to or farming part of the land which are agreed to be severed before sale or under the contract of sale. Thus it is an inclusive definition. Service is defined in section 2(o) of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 which says service means service of any description which is made available to potential users and includes the provision of facilities in connection with banking, financing, insurance, transport,processing,supply of electrical or other energy, board or lodging or both, housing construction entertainment, amusement or the purveying of news or other information, but does not include the information of any services free of charge or under a contract of personal service.

 There is a difference between ‘contract for service’ and ‘contract of service’. A ‘contract for service’ implies a contract whereby one party undertakes to render services e.g. professional or technical services to or for another in the performance of which he is not subject to detailed direction and contract but exercises professional or technical shall and use own knowledge and discretion. A ‘contract of service’ implies a relationship between master and servant and involves an obligation to obey orders in the work to be performed and as to its performance.

Consumer Dispute Redressal Agencies Section provides for redressal agencies for consumer dispute namely (a) District Forum (b) State Commission established state government by and (c) National Commission established by the Central Government by notification

Liability of Internet Service Providers

ISP liability is the legal responsibility of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for the actions of their users regarding copyright infringement and other intellectual property (IP) rights.

Copyright law gives exclusive rights to copyright holders. These rights holders have the legal right to do the following with their works:

• Display
• Reproduce
• Distribute
• Perform

Copyright protection is an essential aspect of intellectual property rights. These IP rights ensure that creators have autonomy over the use of their copyrighted works. But online copyright infringement has become vital in today’s digital age. These copyrighted works are being shared and distributed without the copyright owner’s permission.

Internet users sharing or uploading copyrighted content without permission from the copyright owner is considered infringing content. ISPs may accidentally help the circulation of infringing copies by providing a platform for online users. This infringing activity will likely have consequences.

Role of ISP

ISP is the gateway or an aggregator that provides the network infrastructure, in common parlance, a bandwidth (road network) which gives people access to navigate through the world wide web and access data and information on one end, and on the other, they give hosting and website building and other such services for the supply of data and content. Other than ISP’s various parties are involved in offering solutions for creating, storing,  hosting, delivering and accessing information and content from the content creator to the content consumers such as blogging sites, cloud platforms, hosting servers, database servers, etc. at the end of the day all the information gets stored in a server and is accessed from that servers through the internet. In common parlance, the server is an address where one seeks to access the information through the highway and road network which is provided by the ISP through the internet and bandwidth, to be able to navigate and access the information stored on these servers. The various intermediaries that host, store, process data and data services are all connected to the content providers on one end and the consumers on the other through the ISP’s which are the road network that enables the transport of information and people (albeit virtually) between one point to another.

The website host deploys servers where FTP’s, file transfer protocols are deployed for storing, accessing and transporting files, website hosting is done on these servers. These days cloud computing offers remote storage of data that can be accessed on multiple points. Upon storage, on such servers and cloud servers, this data gets availed to anybody with an internet connection and the address to the server location. An access provider on the other hand provides access to the internet. In the process, all this is happening through the network infrastructure of the internet service provider, ISP. This network infrastructure transports this data to the designated consumer. ISP’s are aggregators who create access and network to transport information exchange.