Redress for free internet services under the scope of the EU and UNCITRAL’s ODR regulations

Resumo

It has been widely acclaimed that ODR could be appropriate for handling conflicts, especially originated in e-commerce transactions. However, suitability of ODR tools has to be examined also from the perspectives of development and constant adoption of new services in the market. In this paper, we focus on the existing and proposed international legal frameworks for ODR and we examine the suitability of these frameworks to provide foundation for redress in disputes over “free” online services. This paper examines EU ODR Regulation that has yet to be applied and current proposal for global ODR framework by UNCITRAL’s Working group III and compares them from point of view of growing business model. We approach these two existing and proposed regulatory solutions for ODR and examine their shortcomings, while at the same time we point to the need of redress over growing number of free services.