「전자상거래 등에서의 소비자보호에 관한 법률」 상 중개플랫폼 책임 조항의 개선방안

Considering recent trends of product suppliers’ growing dependence on online platforms, consumers’ expectations for online platforms’ monitoring of suppliers, and EU’s legislative trends, the approach to consumer protection through online platform brokerage may still be effective, provided that the application of liability theory based upon platform operators’ influence on suppliers and reliance by consumers is desirable. From this point of view, it is regrettable that the Korea Fair Trade Commission’s revised bill mainly stipulates in terms of appearance liability, and it is necessary to reconsider that certain indemnity provisions stipulated in the clauses based upon the appearance liability are not well harmonized with the theory of appearance liability. However, further research is needed on whether to recognize the liability for all intermediary platforms in terms of guardianship or trust, or whether a provision should be established to recognize the liability only for certain business forms (e.g., open market) or platforms which is larger than certain size or holding certain market share or more that can be seen as particularly strong influence over suppliers.