The Consumers Rights in The Internet Transaction Shall Be Regulated

By Dilip Katariya

The existence of internet in the communication world cannot be avoided anymore. The sophisticated instrument used to be used by the United States Department of Defense in 1957 to communicate with its colleague has become a worldwide major communication instrument. It is hugely spreading and now almost the whole countries in the world are using and utilizing internet for communication. The major users of internet are the United States, Japan and China and they take the role in communication through internet. It is predicted that such three countries are dominating the internet users and it is equivalent to half of the world population.

The benefits of internet do not need to be questioned anymore. The facilities such as E-mail/Listserv/Mail Exploder; searching/web/ftp; Usenet and Newsgroup are very useful for the internet users to interact one to another, to socialize and communicate, and exchange information. But it is really unfortunate that those huge benefits are often to be misused by the internet users.

The crimes such as hackers, cyber talking, terrorism, fraud, theft especially for the banking data, personal data, Intellectual Property Rights, sabotage, harassment and denial of service are most crimes regularly happened. The motif are varies such as business, group and organization competition and interest, and hobby. In many cases the purpose is to get personal benefits. For an example the case of Steven Haryanto with wwwklikbca.com, klikbca.com, klickbca.com that have been deceived the consumers to conduct internet banking transactions. The purpose is simply to o steal the consumers' private data.

The internet misused indication is quite apprehensive. Steven's talent in creating misleading websites to hit and trap the careless BCA customers needs to be aware. What is Steven's aim and motif if it is not something related to the crime? Similar to such case, the false websites internet transactions offered fake fancy goods such as Rolex watches, branded bags, international trademark shoes and international books where the sellers expect the buyers to pay the sold goods with credit cards. Once the transaction and payment are completed but the purchased goods never been delivered.

From the survey that had been conducted by 12 world consumer organizations at the end of 1998 and 1999 reported that the negative factor of the internet transaction so far faced by the consumers is that one of ten from the ordered goods never been accepted by the consumers.

Another case is that 2 buyers from England and Hong Kong had waited for more than 5 years to get the refund from the seller. Further that nearly 73% of the sellers failed to fulfill the contract in the internet transactions and 25% of the sellers do not mention their addresses and telephone numbers in the internet transaction. The result is that the consumers will be harmed then where the consumers should report it to?

The crimes in the internet world are happened so often but up until today Indonesia still has not tried to give any legal protection towards the consumers. On the other side the information and technology developments have made the internet using be greater. If the legal protection is still very low then the crimes are going to be increased continuously in the future.

We should realize that in an internet transaction, the internet users or consumers expect that there is a law and legal order. The buyers wish that there is no false advertisement or websites spreading around that finally could damage their interests in the transaction. On the other side the sellers in internet also have the same principle that there will be law and legal order in conducting the internet businesses. Therefore it can be concluded that the sellers and buyers are expecting the certainty of law and trading through the websites world in order to have the both parties equal rights and duties.

The legal certainty for internet field in Indonesia has not been realized yet. It continuously happens since there is no valid rule governs the interests of the businessman and consumers.
For a developed country such as England, they already have a protection model towards the consumers especially for the internet transactions. One of them is Distance Selling Regulation 2000 that governs the consumers' rights in the internet transactions. The Article 7 Paragraph 1 stipulated that the suppliers/businessmen are obligated to provide the information to the consumers in a proper time before conducting any transaction.

The information contains the identity of the businessman, term of delivery, price, payment system and the most important thing is that the consumer has the right to cancel the transaction, except for special terms as mentioned in the Article 13 of the regulation for example that the price of goods is fluctuated based on the market. How is about the protection towards the consumers in Indonesia? We only could be patient and wait for the realization.

Iman Sjahputra and Partners is an advocates and solicitors firm handling all legal matters. www.imansjahputra.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dilip_Katariya

The Top 8 Things The Music, Television, Movie And Consumer Electronics Industries Should Do

By Scott Consolatti

The music, television, movie and consumer electronics industries (hereafter collectively referred to as the industry) have been struggling with the rapid advance of technology and the new virtuality of content. Here are the top eight things the industry should do to harness the technology and recapture the simple tenet of giving the customer what they want.

1. Offer three consumption models.

a. Offer all content free with ads.
All content should be available on demand all the time free with ads. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. The worst examples of this are the television networks who still insist on having their content time expire after only a short period of availability. Networks should use the ad model to make their entire catalog of shows, current and past, available for free all the time. All media stores, such as iTunes, should also introduce the option of listening to or watching a brief ad per 10 minutes of content or so in order to enjoy the entire content rather than just short preview clips.

b. Rent all content without ads for a fee.
This is the same as 1a only without the ads for a fee. The best examples of this so far are Netflix and Yahoo! Music Unlimited. With the former, for as low as $8.99 per month, you can rent any movie in the store, and that now includes some that can be watched directly online. With the latter, for as low as $5.99 per month, you can listen to every song in the store as many times as you want with no ads. All media stores and sites should offer this option.

c. Sell all content Digital Rights Management(DRM, or copy protection)-free.
There will still always be a market for owning content outright, such as for those times where you just don't have an Internet connection or don't want to be tethered to a server. In these cases, for both online virtual formats and offline physical formats, DRM simply should go. It has proven to hamper sales significantly due to treating everyday paying customers as if they are pirates, restricting them to play back the content on too few devices, giving them the chore of backing up and managing licenses on their computer and violating their fair use rights. DRM will always be defeatable and the industry simply needs to stop investing an inordinate amount of time and money into something that has a negative impact on their bottom line. The industry should abandon it and get back to the basic premise of allowing the customer the joy of experiencing the content they paid for without any strings attached. The best example of this so far is EMI which is now allowing media stores to sell DRM-free songs.

2. Wireless Internet-enable all devices.
The computer cannot be the only access point. TVs, cable boxes, disc players, DVRs, game consoles, portables, boom boxes, phones, car head units - in short all playback devices - should come with built-in wireless connection to the Internet for access to content servers. The best examples of this so far are the Playstation 3 and the iPhone/iPod touch Wi-Fi Music Store.

3. End format wars.
When a new format is needed to advance the industry to the next level, there should be one and only one format that goes to market and becomes the standard. Like 1c, this applies to both online virtual formats and offline physical formats.

The current example in physical formats is Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. Two formats were necessary at first to spur competition, but the differences between them at this point are so negligible that ultimately one has to win for either to succeed. A standards body needs to exist to allow competition at first and to oversee a limited beta period to ensure customer opinions are factored in, but then to ultimately pick a winner before full-scale market launch. Companies should be required to register candidate formats in the early stages. The standards body should track investment and invention level of each candidate along the way. Then a winner should be chosen with a percentage of the licensing revenue going to all of the candidates commensurate with their investment and invention level. The candidates either agree to these terms from the get-go or they do not participate in determining and profiting from the next generation format.

The current example in virtual formats is mp3 vs. AAC vs. WMA vs. yet others for audio, and mpeg-4 (H.264) vs. WMV (VC-1) vs. yet others for video. Coupled with 1c, the industry should have standardized on mp3 and mpeg-4 a long time ago to ensure that all content will be universally playable on every device.

Correcting this immediately is essential. The industry should get a standards body in place as soon as possible and declare much overdue industry standards, such as Blu-ray, mp3 and mpeg-4. The marketplace will rejoice, sales will skyrocket and the floodgates will open on the dam the industry itself has been one of the largest contributors to building.

4. Allow playlists to be defined and stored on the servers.
What 1a and 1b do is move us away from the need to store and manage our own copies of the content on our client devices (or on our shelves). Moving playlists off of the clients is a natural extension of that. When we can dial up all content including our favorite playlists on demand all the time anywhere we have an Internet connection, the convenience of not having to permanently store and backup our own copies of the data will start to prevail. The best example of this so far is Yahoo! Music Jukebox.

5. Offer movies by the chapter in addition to whole.
Just as the norm is now to be able to buy individual songs rather than just whole albums, the same option should be available for buying the individual chapters of movies. Doing so would offer the same advantages as individual song sales - the ability to collect favorite chapters at lower cost and storage use, the ability to direct-access chapters on playback and the ability to arrange favorite chapters from various movies into playlists. Note that this would require players to pre-cache the next chapter to ensure gapless chapter-to-chapter playback, but that is certainly doable.

6. Offer a choice of bitrates.
Highly compressed bitrates were fine at first, but there is no doubt that even with today's bandwidth and storage (which will only grow with time), those who want to enjoy higher bitrates should have the option. With 1a and 1b, bandwidth is the primary factor, and clearly higher bitrates are possible even today. With 1c online formats, storage is also a factor, but even with today's capacities some may choose quality over quantity for must-have content.

7. Piggyback audio on video for physical formats.

The industry moving to a new physical format is a big undertaking. Assuming a new HD format succeeds for video, then audio should just piggyback on that success. The video format will obviously have enough capacity for audio, and consumers will not have to buy additional players.
Previous HD audio attempts of DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD failed for several reasons - separate audio-only players, no single digital connection such as HDMI, format war, etc. - all of which can be avoided once either Blu-ray or HD DVD is declared the standard. Albums in uncompressed PCM, both 2-channel stereo and multi-channel surround, with HD extras such as music videos, live concert footage and still photos all played through an existing player with single HDMI connection would be very compelling. With lossless compression such as Dolby TrueHD, perhaps entire album box sets could fit on one disc. These are exciting new possibilities.

8. Leverage viral marketing.

This is an extension of 1a. Provide url-addressability to free ad-coupled content that sites anywhere can provide links to - it essentially equates to free marketing for you. It doesn't matter from where the eyeballs found the content, just that they found it. More eyeballs means more ad revenue in your pocket and more exposure that will lead to the eventual purchase of the content and related merchandise such as concert tickets, t-shirts, posters, action figures, toys, etc. A free ad-supported lure has always been necessary (radio and TV) for widespread exposure. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. Music, movies and all TV programs should get on board and realize the massive new source of constant ad revenue never before possible without the new technology.

These eight things would take the industry out of its current slump and carry it into unprecedented growth territory.

Scott Consolatti is founder and president of Megacollage, a pioneer in online media compilations including music and video playlists, custom photo collages and text compilations. See for yourself how Megacollage combines the best of what today's online content world has to offer by visiting http://www.megacollage.com/index.html