전자상거래법 개정안의 역외적용 규정에 대한 비판적 斷想

The amendment bill to the 'Act on Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce, Etc.' (hereinafter referred to as the 'Electronic Commerce Act') announced by the Fair Trade Commission on March 5, 2021, is in Article 5 (Applicability to Overseas Activities), “This Act is applied to cases that affect domestic consumers, even if they are made abroad.” The purpose of the provision for extraterritorial application is to clarify that acts outside the country are also subject to the law if they affect domestic consumers as consumer damage increases due to the activation of overseas direct purchases. The provision for extraterritorial application stipulates the will to apply the E-Commerce Act to overseas business operators if they affect domestic consumers by specifying the scope of personal or location application, and therefore is the international mandatory rule. The problem is that when this regulation “affects domestic consumers,” the e-commerce law can be applied extraterritorially, resulting in the domestic corporation e-commerce law being applied for virtually all international e-commerce transactions between overseas platforms and domestic consumers. As a result, the balance of interests between overseas business operators and domestic consumers carefully designed by the legislator through the amended Articles 42 and 47 of the Private International Law will collapse. According to the amendments to the E-Commerce Act, Articles 42 and 47 of the Private International Law are completely obsolete as far as overseas e-commerce is concerned. Therefore, it is desirable to delete the provision for extraterritorial application in the amendment and leave this issue entirely to private international law.