Law on the internet

The Internet is a marketing power and it is thanks to it that many businesses are developing very dynamically. Every entrepreneur who wants to appear on the market must have an interesting and professionally prepared website where he/she presents his/her offer. Even if online sales are only part of the company’s activity (i.e. some stationary stores that also sell their products over the Internet), the content they present on their websites must comply with the provisions of the law in force on the Internet.

Internet sale

The provisions of Polish law contain many regulations regarding online sales. Every entrepreneur who wants to open his/her store online must meet certain conditions for his/her business to be fully legal.

Company data rights

One of the most important things to remember when creating an online store is entering all your company details on the website. Information such as its full name, tax identification number, company address must appear there. Why is it so important? Apart from the fact that there is such a legal requirement, it is important for another reason as well. If you want to gain the trust of your website users (and therefore potential customers), you cannot be anonymous. On the Internet, where the competition is very fierce, the most popular are those stores that can be – colloquially speaking – overexposed.

Regulations

The second very important issue is the store regulations. Why is it so important? Because it organizes and specifies in detail the mutual obligations to which the seller and the buyer are subject. The purpose of creating such a document is primarily to inform the customer in detail about the terms of sale, and thus to meet the information obligations referred to in The Act on Consumer Rights.

Polish law includes, among others, several acts containing provisions on what should be contained in properly prepared regulations. These are such legal acts as the aforementioned Act on Consumer Rights, the Act on the Protection of competition and Consumer Rights, Act on Providing Services by Electronic Means, as well as EU regulations and acts. According to the regulations contained therein, the regulations should include:

characteristics of the products or services offered by the store;
conditions for the provision of services on the Internet;
data protection declaration;
method and terms of making payments;
delivery method and costs of it;
the term of the sales contract;
conditions for the termination of the sales contract as well as for returning or submitting a complaint;
conditions for withdrawing from the sales contract and determining the related costs;
determining the scope of the seller’s liability for the goods;
information about the possibility of using the ODR platform to resolve a possible dispute.

For the safety and protection of the rights of the seller and the buyer, it is also important that the store regulations do not contain prohibited clauses, i.e. records in which stores operating on the Internet declare that they are not responsible for any delays in shipments.

Data protection law

Making transactions via the Internet is connected with the fact that the seller must obtain certain personal data from the customer related to the sales process. Each of the website users who decide to purchase a product should be clearly informed that such information will be processed. The document that explains the purposes and methods of data processing and use to customers and which must be published on websites and online stores is the Privacy Policy.

The conditions for the processing of this information and its storage are set out in the Data Protection Act of 25/05/2018, i.e. in short, the well-known GDPR. The basic rights of the person whose data is processed and stored by the store administrator, include the right to access this type of information, rectify it if necessary, the right to delete data (also commonly referred to as the right to “be forgotten”) and the right to transfer them. On its basis, the customer may request information about himself/herself that was collected by the store.

The cookie policy is related to the issue of personal data. It is true that these small text files are mainly designed to ensure the proper functioning of the server pages, but they can also provide a lot of important and detailed information about the activity and shopping preferences of users. For this reason, these files are subject to the provisions of the GDPR, and information about their use must be found on the websites of online stores.

The note relating to cookies must contain information about who is the controller of personal data and what is the purpose of their use. In addition, the user should be instructed how to change the settings in his/her browser so that cookies are not saved.

Distance contracts

The conclusion of distance contracts via the Internet means another legal obligation for the seller. He/She must inform the buyer that by deciding to place an order in the online store or through the websites, he/she undertakes to pay for it. Provisions on this subject can be found in Art. 17 of The Act on Consumer Rights.

In order to be fully legal to do business on the Internet, the offer must also comply with the legal requirements. This is because all products and services can be distributed via the Internet. Therefore, it is worth reading carefully the list of regulations on what can be sold in this way to avoid legal hassle.

Copyright

Copying someone else’s content is common on the Internet. It happens very often that website owners and store owners copy another author’s content and post it on their site. Such action is inconsistent with the Act on Copyright and Related Rights of February 4, 1994. This also applies to product descriptions appearing in online stores.

What is Copyright?

According to the definition, copyright is all the rights that the author of a given work or work has. They result from the author’s rights to make decisions about its use and obtaining benefits. Copyrights include the way of using the work, publishing and inviolability of the content, signing it with your name or pseudonym, etc.

Consequences of breaking copyrights

Contrary to what it might seem, breaking the copyright law runs the risk of severe punishment. For the unlawful use of someone’s intellectual heritage, we may be sentenced up to 5 years in prison. Therefore, it is worth making sure that our activities are completely legal, or hire specialists who will help in the preparation of relevant documents.