ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3, I explore how consumer contract laws deal with IoT power imbalances. To this end, I will start with a critical assessment of whether the Unfair Terms Directive can be invoked to tackle the IoT’s contractual quagmire. An intricate web of contractual relationships - where hundreds of ‘legals’ are hidden and present in ways that are impossible to understand - is used to put in place exploitative practices, but it remains to be seen if unfair term laws can be of meaningful help in these novel scenarios. I will then explore the issue of private ordering ‘by bricking,’ that is, the possibility to modify the Thing remotely and throughout its life cycle, including the possibility to remove its smartness and render it effectively unusable. I will evaluate whether this ‘bricking’ can be addressed by consumer sales law, especially after a recent reform that is replacing the First Consumer Directive and pairing it with the Supply of Digital Content Directive. Can the deprivation of smartness qualify as a lack of conformity? Finally, it will question whether the precontractual duties to inform under the Consumer Rights Directive can address the challenges of ‘IoT commerce’ to mandated disclosures, namely, the tension between text-based notice-and-consent mechanisms and the reality of immersive, hyperconnected, interface-free transactional environments.
