My Click is My Bond

Abstract

The growth in Internet use is not only placing pressure on service providers to maintain adequate bandwidth but also the people who run the Websites that operate through them. Called systems operators, or sysops, these people face a number of different obligations arising out of the use of their computer-mediated communication platforms. Most notable are contracts, which nearly all Websites have, and in the case of e-commerce sites in the European Union, there are contractual terms they must have. This chapter sets out to investigate how the role contract law can both help and hinder sysops and their users. Sysop powers are limited by sysop prerogative, which is everything they can do which has not been taken away by statute or given away by contract. The chapter finds that there are a number of special considerations for sysops in how they use contracts in order that they are not open to obligations through disabled or vulnerable users being abused by others.