Challenges of Contracting in Times of Pandemic

Abstract

The confluence of digital technologies for the generation, storage and transmission of data (informatics), with the existence of open and closed communications networks, have given concrete form to McLuhan’s utopia of the sixties, a world interconnected and communicated in real time, with access to all kinds of information by an indiscriminate universe of people (information society). In this context, electronic commerce and electronic contracting appear with enormous advantages in the marketing of goods and services given their speed, cost reduction – with the disappearance of intermediaries and commissions –, greater choice and better economic conditions, advertising via the internet, the extent of the market given that the parties may be domiciled in different places regardless of where they are located and the good or service can be offered worldwide, being able to operate without border limits; however, this new phenomenon was also accompanied by certain dangers such as the lack of information on conditions of service, quality of products and services, impulsive trade declarations, accession contracts, mistrust of the counterparty’s business stability, increased risks of fraud in the identity of the subjects, in the benefits or means of payment, increased unemployment – as the machines supply human functions –, the greater complexity in identifying the parties involved in the transaction, the need to develop, as a counterpart, security systems that make it possible to carry out the business, finally, the evidentiary difficulty since the transaction is not recorded in a paper medium.