French postal service&#39;s monopoly on industrial contract communications - legal basis? The government in France has a monopoly encouraged by law, whereby contracts can be opened digitally, but have to be cancelled through a signed paper letter paid to the government postal service. Every year 240 million signed letters are posted, at 1.2 billion euros. (yes i am French!) Code Civil 2016 Art. 1126. –Information requested for the conclusion of a contract and information provided to execute the conclusion of a contract may be sent by electronic mail (only) if the recipient has agreed that this means may be used.(&gt;98% of companies refuse) In theory, customers could pre-emptively choose a company that accepts digitally signed cancellations (free, easy), but in reality absolutely no companies want or allow any clients to cancel digitally, they all only accept paid, postal cancellation. Comparatively, Microsoft forced people to manually download competing browsers, and it was a &quot;choice&quot; which was a lot easier than the La Poste 99% market on paid contract cancellations... is there not a strong case of market abuse by La Poste in EU law? It has 99% of the market, legally encouraged/ protected. Quote from Law.fr: In the absence of a letter with proof of delivery, the law can nullify the financial claims involved on a contractual basis (cohabitation costs, rental, etc) ... So, a signed for letter is often obligatory to end a contract: property rental mobile / internet assurance compte bancaire employment It's environmentally unfriendly to use envelopes instead of digital contracts. In European anti-monopoly law, does that not represent some kind of abuse and monopoly of communications? What is it like in other countries?
In European anti-monopoly law, does that not represent some kind of abuse and monopoly of communications? As a general rule, governments are allowed to award monopolies to individuals or private firms, or to governmental entities, and governmental entities are not, in general, subject to anti-trust liability. For example, governments may nationalize a particular industry, government may authorize a firm that is regulated as a utility to have a monopoly in lieu of using private competition between firms to provide utilities, governments can award patents to inventors which are monopolies, governments can establish a national health service, and so on. Anti-trust law is a create of statute and only prohibits what national governments decide to prohibit by statute, which rarely includes their own activities. In the E.U., this is somewhat complicated by the fact that the E.U., generally speaking, tries to put government contracts from within the E.U. but outside the country offer government contracts on an equal footing. But that does not, in general, prevent the government from nationalizing a good or service and making it an exclusively governmental function. The Postal Service is a governmental entity and/or regulated utility, so this would seem to be proper. In the same vein, across Continental Europe, notaries public have transferrable, non-exclusive license to a particular territory in the country (that can be bought and sold between licensed notaries) and only a small number are allowed in any jurisdiction. Anyone who wants to do business transactions that require notaries must deal with one of them and in low population areas there may well be a monopoly. Anti-trust law is generally directed at preventing unregulated anti-competitive conduct by private firms. Also, as noted in the original question, the use of means other than mail to cancel contracts isn't mandated, it is a choice of the parties in the context of laws that allow for alternatives. And, while the statutes disfavor electronic communications, the statutes do not, as a comment notes, state that contracts may not be terminated by a letter delivered by hand, signed in person and in presence, or delivered by another carrier providing traceability. The government post office means is presumably less expensive than a private courier providing hand delivery, but termination by hand delivery or courier of a signed dead tree paper letter appears to be allowed to cancel a contract without counter-party consent. So, it isn't a true monopoly. In the same vein, the law does not mandate that apartment leases require payment of a security deposit, but the prevailing legal rules create an incentive that makes this practice very widespread.
In a normal rental property, the tenant is in a contract with the telecommunications provider and landlord has no business listening to the communication. When the landlord does provide internet access for tenants, he/she gets into a complicated legal position. The owner of the internet connection is generally liable for things like copyright violations, hate speech, etc. coming from that connection. This law predates open-access wifi connections and even the internet. Legislation and legal precedent are only slowly catching up with that new reality.
united-states There is no general rule against one company or person buying both broadcasting rights and merchandising rights to a particular piece of content in the US. There are anti-monopoly/anti-trust laws, but those generally only apply if a particular entity holds a monopoly or a commanding market position in a whole market sector. If one firm held the rights to 80% of all online games, for example, an anti-trust action might well be warranted. But a single game or property is not generally considered to be a market sector for anti-trust purposes. Exactly what the proper market sector is in such cases is often a complex, technical, and highly disputed issue. The &quot;original owner of the IP&quot; can decide who s/he wishes to sell that IP to -- nothing requires, or forbids, that different sets of rights be sold to the same buyer. The original owner will attempt to get the best deal available. Sometimes that is a very lucrative deal, and sometimes it is far from that. As long as unlawful methods are not used to induce a sale, whatever bargain the parties make is generally acceptable to the law. I do not know who did, or did not, buy any of the rights to Squid Game, and that info might not be publicly available. But there is no law that I know of against the same party having both broadcast and marketing rights to it, and perhaps other rights as well.
is this absolutely required to be considered a valid document in most jurisdictions, most notably, the European Union? Not at all. There is no legal requirement that contracts, terms of service, and so forth be drafted, devised, or even validated by a lawyer. Law requires that certain types of contract be notarized. That refers to the moment where the parties sign/formalize the contract, which is different from --and independent of-- whether its terms were written by a lawyer. A messaging service like the one you have in mind definitely is not subject to such requirement either.
Please note that I'm not a lawyer. If you need specific legal advice, please consult a qualified attorney. Every time someone buys an item from someone else, there's at least an implied contract of sale where the seller of the item agrees to give the buyer the item to be purchased in exchange for a sum of money or other object of value which the buyer agrees to pay as consideration. Generally, in an online purchase, a contract of sale is completed when payment is made and the product has shipped. If the seller fails to provide the item you intended to buy after you make your payment, that's a breach of this contract of sale as the seller has failed to execute their end of the contract. I seriously doubt a "no refunds" policy would excuse the vendor for breaching the contract of sale. If you cannot resolve the issue with the vendor, then your best bet is to initiate a dispute through your credit/debit card issuer.
How can a new business (especially a tech business) find its first few customers if not by cold texting in some way or another? Don’t know, don’t care. This is Law SE, not Marketing SE. Does PECR force new businesses to market themselves strictly in the public domain, e.g. on social media? Not at all. It prevents spam and is in line with similar laws in most of the World. You can call or SMS people (unless they are in a do not call list), use conventional marketing like radio, TV, direct post but you cannot send spam email.
The &quot;letter&quot; you quote says more than what Ionos says publicly, the latter not mentioning any date. The most obvious possibility is Treasury Department sanctions against Russia: while the sanctions don't necessarily prohibit servicing and any all Russian nationals or residents, Russia is subject to sanctions and that's what the TOS says. A problem is that the TOS refers to a &quot;country subject to U.S. Treasury Department embargo restrictions&quot;, which is not legally defined. Here is the Treasury Department's explanation of that point (which is that there are very many types of restrictions: there is no legal category of &quot;embargo restrictions&quot;). One could then argue, in one's breach of contract arbitration hearing, that the clause cannot reasonably be interpreted the way the company (possibly) intends it to be. The force majeure clause does not seem relevant unless they see some way in which the invasion of Ukraine makes it impossible for the company to fulfill the contract with Russians.
Why is this reply not considered an agreement to sell the company? Because a sender's opportunism regarding the bizarre contents of the autoreply preclude a finding that there is a meeting of the minds. Could someone get out of a contract by proving that their email agreeing to it (e.g., &quot;Yes, I agree to the contract&quot;) was an autoreply? It mostly depends on the element of authorization to set up the autoreply that way. If the person who wrote the autoreply was authorized by the user of the email account to set it up that way, the contract binds the user. This form of blind and reckless formation of contracts is an extreme scenario of Restatement (Second) of Contracts at §154(b). The contract might be null and void as unreasonable, contrary to public policy, and/or on other grounds. But a wide range of scenarios would fall short of warranting a nullification of the contract. (Disclaimer: I am affiliated with the linked site.)