More order for e-commerce

by Karen Wang

With the rapid development of the e-commerce, the new forms like “social online”, “livestreaming sales”, etc. are emerging. The Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Online Transactions (the “Measures”) published by State Administration for Market Regulation took effect on May 1, 2021. Let’s take look at the shining points of the Measures.

Three Years Saving Rule

It is worth noting that the Measures point out that the livestreaming videos shall be saved for not less than three years from the end of the livestreaming, which means that the livestreaming videos shall be saved at least three years, and if possible, the longer time is encouraged.

The three years saving rule is in line with the provisions of Article 31 of the E-commerce law that "the time for preservation of trading information on goods and services and trading information shall not be less than three years from the date of completion of the transaction".

In addition, the information about online stores, commodities, streamers and sales fully recorded in such live videos will enable the right owners, administrative law enforcement departments, public security departments and judicial departments to have a good and clear record of cracking down on counterfeiting commodities in the future, and efficiently find out the illegal operators involved in the infringing commodities, and carry out investigation one by one.

Personal Information Protection

Currently, the excessive collection of personal information and abuse of personal information by the platform or the operators in the platform have become the most concerned issues of consumers in online transactions. 

In daily life, the consumers often encounter the situation that they can't use App if they don't agree to authorize e-commerce to use or collect personal information. 

Regarding on this, the Measures states that the online transaction operators must follow the principle of necessity to collect and use consumers' personal information. 

The purpose, method and scope of collecting and using information must be clearly stated and agreed by consumers. 

In addition, online transaction operators shall not force the consumers to agree to collect and use information that is not directly related to business activities by means of one-time authorization or default authorization, etc.

Like above-mentioned, we can see that the principle of necessity shall always be followed when collecting the personal information, and this principle has the similar provision in Cybersecurity Law and Civil Code. 

It is worth mentioning that the Article 1036 of the Civil Code clearly states that a person will not bear civil liability for any other activity performed in a reasonable manner and for the purpose of protecting the public interests. This implies that people need to make certain concessions on personal information in front of public interests.

“Choose One Platform over Others”

The e-commerce platforms normally set a rule stipulating that the merchants can only choose one e-commerce platform for promotion among the different shopping platforms during the annual shopping festival held by the e-commerce platforms. The "Choose One platform vore Others" has become a hot issue in the annual e-commerce activities like "Double 11" or "6.18".

The essence of this rule is that the platform can eliminate competition by signing an exclusive agreement with the trading counterpart, which is contrary to the principle of voluntary equality.

Such rule of restricting transactions has brought great negative impact on the market environment and consumer interests. 

Meanwhile, the person in charge of the online supervision of the State Administration for Market Regulation said that due to the strong concealment of the restrictions implemented by the platform, from the perspective of practice, it has increased the difficulty of supervision and law enforcement.

The Measures make clear that the platform shall not prohibit or restrict the operators of the platform from independently choosing to carry out business activities on multiple platforms or using improper means to restrict the operators to carry out business activities only on specific platforms by removing goods from shelves, restricting operation, shielding stores, and increasing service charges. 

At the present stage, the Anti-monopoly Law is mostly applied to regulate the "Choose One Platform over Others" issue, and the relevant market definition and market dominant position are two major issues in the determination of abusing market dominant position, which need to be analyzed based on specific case.