E-commerce, Virtual Contracts and Consumers Protection Legal Issues

The paper offers an overview on contracting legal emerging issues in the Internet and Virtual Spaces: from the initial ludic phase of the Internet through later commercialization until the recent development of EU Digital Single Market (DSM).The commercialization of the Internet and the huge global spread of electronic commerce both among professional traders (Business to Business) and between traders and consumers (Business to Consumer) – now extended to mobile devices, especially smartphones, the so-called Mobile Commerce – favour the emersion of a new negotiation category – socially typical in this respect because widely recognised in the digital trade practice – for contracting on the new technological layer: Virtual Contract. This seems an appropriate term to define the various forms of negotiation – above all point and click formation of online contract – that are all used in the virtual space of the Internet or the virtual spaces of the Internet. The paper focuses also on obligations to inform in contracts with consumers between mere documentation of the obligation to inform and protection of the informative content of the contract. The Author analyzes in particular distance contract Consumer protection rules under Consumer Code as amended and updated by Legislative Decree No. 21 of 21 February 2014, which gives effect to EU Directive No. 83 of 25 October 2011.