The Applicability of the Digital Content Directive and Sales of Goods Directive to Goods with Digital Elements

K. Sein
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Abstract

There is an ongoing trend to develop inter-connected or ‘smart’ consumer goods, which either contain digital content (such as software) or use digital services for certain of their functions (as with the navigation system of a smart car). The new Digital Content Directive and Sales of Goods Directive create a legal presumption that the seller of smart goods is contractually liable not only for the tangible item and embedded digital software but also for the inter-connected digital services. However, the article shows that much room remains for party autonomy as express agreement in a sales contract may limit the liability of the seller even for the operating system of smart goods and, thereby, override reasonable consumer expectations. The situation becomes even more complicated when the ‘digital element’ of the goods consists of free and open-source software: in these cases, the ‘separately bought’ digital content does not even fall within the scope of the Digital Content Directive, with the result that the seller is not liable for the digital content under the Sales of Goods Directive and the digital content provider is not liable for it under the Digital Content Directive. Therefore, the article argues that the new contract-law package does not raise the level of consumer protection in respect of smart goods as much as it might initially seem to.
数字内容指令和商品销售指令对含有数字元素的商品的适用性
发展互联或“智能”消费品的趋势正在持续,这些消费品要么包含数字内容(如软件),要么使用数字服务实现某些功能(如智能汽车的导航系统)。新的《数字内容指令》和《商品销售指令》建立了一个法律推定,即智能商品的卖家不仅对有形物品和嵌入式数字软件负有合同责任,而且对互联的数字服务负有合同责任。然而,这篇文章表明,当事人自治仍有很大的空间,因为销售合同中的明确协议可能会限制卖方的责任,即使是智能商品的操作系统,从而凌驾于消费者的合理期望之上。当商品的“数字元素”由免费和开源软件组成时,情况变得更加复杂:在这些情况下,“单独购买”的数字内容甚至不属于数字内容指令的范围,因此,卖方根据《商品销售指令》不对数字内容承担责任,而数字内容提供商根据《数字内容指令》不对其承担责任。因此,文章认为,新的合同法一揽子计划并没有像最初看起来那样提高智能商品的消费者保护水平。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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