Friday , 22 March 2024

5 Legal Tips For eCommerce Businesses That Make Technical Sense

The law surrounding eCommerce is new, complex and seemingly full of loopholes. As a result, many new eCommerce businesses know a lot less about it than they care to admit. So here’s a brief guide to five of the most important legal considerations for eCommerce businesses.

London Divorce Lawyers Online? That Counts As eCommerce

Within the EU, eCommerce is “the sale or purchase of goods or services, conducted over computer networks by methods specifically designed for the purpose of receiving or placing of orders”. But, that’s not all. The legal definition goes on to state that “the goods or services are ordered by those methods, but the payment and the ultimate delivery of the goods or services do not have to be conducted online”.

By this definition, a London divorce lawyer’s, a Boston massage therapist’s, or Toronto-based dentist’s services may or may not count as eCommerce, depending on what their website is for. If the website just provides contact information, that doesn’t count as an eCommerce platform. However, if the website allows you to place an order — even if the eventual payment is offline — that counts as eCommerce. It is the ordering of the goods that matters.

In the US, however, the legal definition states that eCommerce is when “products and services are sold through an electronic medium, without using any paper documents.” Not using paper documents would imply — like the EU — orders made online. Yet, the wording is different. It’s hard to imagine an instance in which this distinction would matter, but new eCommerce business models often throw up legal conundrums for precisely that reason. After all, lawmakers can’t predict the future.

This is why the “gig economy” is such a legal headache. Those companies found a niche in the market which isn’t explicitly covered by commerce or eCommerce law as it stands. It was hard to imagine a situation in which Uber would complicate the law until they did it.

eCommerce Is International, But the Law Is Not

One of the biggest legal problems with global eCommerce giants — whether they are gig economy leaders like Uber or more standard eCommerce businesses like Amazon — is when they try to operate the same way in every country. Globalisation is a somewhat unpopular idea often espoused by those same Silicon Valley companies, because they believe eCommerce means a global economy and a global way of doing business.

Yet, while we may live in a culturally globalised world, we do not live in a legally globalised world. As such, eCommerce law can and does vary from country to country. If that London divorce lawyer were a New York divorce lawyer, or that Boston massage therapist were a Sydney massage therapist, they would have to follow different eCommerce laws.

Let’s say that your Phoenix-based business delivers to a few countries in Western Europe. That means that someone from France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, or Ireland could order a product from your site. With customers coming in from different countries, which eCommerce laws should you follow?

The American ones. Regardless of where you’re selling to, you must follow the eCommerce laws of the country you’re selling from. For the customer, similar laws apply. They must follow the eCommerce laws of the country they are buying from.

This can get complicated fast, which is why it’s important to keep track. That London divorce lawyer will need to operate under the eCommerce laws of the UK, but they will also need to bear in mind the laws of the country in which the couple are married, where they got married and where they are now.

In the US, this even works on a state level. So while it’s very easy for an eCommerce business based in Oregon to sell guns online, it would be a lot harder for a web user in New York to buy those guns.

Most eCommerce Laws Are New

For British eCommerce businesses, the two most relevant laws are the Data Protection Act 1998 (which was updated as recently as 1st December 2016, with those updates coming into force on 10th May 2017) and the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002. In short, eCommerce law is new and it is still changing. It’s important to keep on top of these changes in the same way you would try to keep on top of other eCommerce trends.

Most eCommerce Laws Are Common Sense

While keeping abreast of eCommerce law is a good idea, most eCommerce law is obvious. False advertising, phishing email scams, selling contraband goods, blackmail: we know that this stuff is against the law offline. eCommerce law means that it’s illegal online, too.

Legislation is built on top of older legislation and this is one of the things which gives the law its authority. As such, it’s unsurprising to discover that eCommerce law is based on commerce law. What might be surprising to discover is that commerce law is based on law dating all the way back to 1694. Shakespeare had only died that century and Jane Austen, Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin wouldn’t be born for another 100 years.

A Strong Privacy Policy Is Recommended, But It’s Not The Law

As an eCommerce business, you will have access to a lot more customer information than offline commerce businesses. That’s just how online shopping works. As such, you could have a privacy policy as lax as Facebook’s, but it’s best to have a stringent privacy policy to quell the very real concerns of the 79% of Britons who worry about their privacy online. After all, the only reason people tolerate Facebook’s privacy policy because its service is free. They won’t feel the same way about your business.

Image from https://edepoze.com/digital-legal-practice-arrived/

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