E-commerce is now a trans-boundary affair, affecting a huge number of buyers across the world that rely on E-commerce sites for their shopping needs, largely due to paucity of time. From shopping for clothing to groceries, furniture to ready-made food, to booking tickets and rooms online, reviews of these products and the number of times the product has been brought before are an influencing factor for the current buyer. But what sellers on E-commerce websites often engage in something known as “brushing” – that is faking sales transactions to boost rankings or draw more traffic to a website to make the product seem like one in demand. Such practices are also engaged in hospitality business, where they hire people to fake good reviews (“Click Farming”) and also delete negative ones. These market practices are unfair and China has become one of the few countries to curb the same through amendments to the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, 1993 accepted by the National People’s Congress on 13th January’18. Among the punitive measures that have been outlined, online merchants that fake sales or feedback can be fined as much as 2 million Yuan (301,000 USD) or lose their business license, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported Monday.
To read about the effects of Click Farm and Brushing on Competition Law: http://www.mondaq.com/x/585566/Trade+Regulation+Practices/The+Benefits+And+Harms+Of+eCommerce+On+Competition+Law
To read more about the effect of the amendment on E-commerce: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-06/china-is-finally-going-after-click-farms-and-fake-online-sales
To read more about the amendment to the Chinese Law: https://www.chinalawinsight.com/2017/11/articles/intellectual-property/amendment-to-chinas-anti-unfair-competition-law/
This post has been authored by Tasneem Zakir from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences.
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