Electronic Commerce Law: Privacy, Data Protection, and Cybersecurity

Electronic Commerce Law: Privacy, Data Protection, and Cybersecurity
Introduction
Most commercial activity is governed by state law, which makes it difficult and confusing for individuals to do business through electronic commerce (e-commerce) platforms. In essence, the legality of the transactions and the enforceability of contracts will be determined by law. For some businesses and individuals, engaging in contractual agreements through e-commerce may face such hurdles as verifying signatures and making online contracts legally binding and legally enforceable. For this reason, the development of e-commerce law can be seen as a mechanism to facilitate online transactions while, at the same time, protecting the users of such platforms. E-commerce law can be a broad subject due to the multiple aspects it covers. In this research, the focus will be on the legal issues surrounding data protection, privacy, and cybersecurity as they related to e-commerce.
To accomplish the purpose of this research, a brief overview of e-commerce is presented to lay the foundation for the research. secondly, a description of the legal issues in e-commerce helps paint a picture of why the various e-commerce laws are a necessity. Additionally, this section will reveal the progress in legislation regarding online commerce. The other three sections will cover privacy and data protection laws, and cybersecurity laws in terms of how they apply to e-commerce. In these sections, the evolution of the legal efforts and the efficacy of the laws, as well as the remaining gaps will be explored.
Overview of Electronic Commerce
The emergence and proliferation of the internet and digital devices have transformed modern society across all pillars of human life. Business activities have been affected tremendously, both in positive and negative ways. The positive implications have included the introduction of new platforms on which to conduct businesses – e-commerce. The term ‘e-commerce’ can be defined as the use of the internet and networks to sell, purchase, transport, or trade in services, goods, or data. However, this definition offers only a narrow perspective on the scope of activities that can be conducted on these platforms. As such, an alternative term with a broader perspective is e-business, which includes all the aforementioned e-commerce activities in addition to collaborating with business partners, servicing customers, e-learning, and e-transactions. Even though these two terms can be used interchangeably, it is important to emphasize that their usage refers to engagements across online platforms that have a commercial value. As a result, even such activities as customer data management, social media marketing, and online shopping are all included in the conceptualization of e-commerce.[Efraim Turban, et al. Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce. Cham: Springer, 2017.]
E-commerce can take many forms and typologies depending on the extent of digitization of the business activities. As a result, there is pure e-commerce and partial e-commerce. Pure e-commerce entails where all aspects of the transition are digital: ordering, payments, delivery, and order fulfillment. Partial e-commerce comprises at least one ...