Can primary school students get their top-up reward money back?
Beijing Internet Court has accepted 57 cases involving unrecharged rewards
□ Our reporter Zhang Xuehong
Since the establishment of the court in September 2018, the Beijing Internet Court has accepted a total of 76 online disputes involving minors, of which 57 are recharge and reward cases, accounting for 75%.
This data comes from the “Report on Judicial Protection of Minors on the Internet” (hereinafter referred to as the “Report”) recently released by the Beijing Internet Court.
The "Report" shows that the vast majority of minors in these cases have evaded family supervision and platform certification measures.
In addition to being the victims of online personality rights infringement, minors sometimes become the perpetrators of the infringement.
Most of the rewarders are primary school students
According to the "Report", among the parties in the 76 cases, the youngest victim was only 5 years old, and the most involved parties were 8 to 16 years old, accounting for 86.8%.
Among the 63 cases that have been concluded, 74.6% were settled by mediation and withdrawal, and 22.2% were settled by judgment.
Judging from the specific dispute content of the case, online disputes involving minors mainly focus on top-up rewards, online shopping, and infringement of personality rights.
The "Report" shows that recharge and reward cases also include game recharge, live broadcast reward and other types. The plaintiffs in the cases mostly claim that the recharge behavior of minors will not take effect, and demand the return of the recharge money.
Among the 57 cases, the average amount of the game recharge case was more than 84,000 yuan, the average amount of the live reward case was more than 69,000 yuan, and the highest amount involved was 610,000 yuan.
Minors mostly start with simple contact with online games and online live broadcasts, and then obtain a better entertainment experience through recharge and rewards, and later develop into large recharge rewards, and some minors will also purchase "game booster" services.
"Some minors deceive their parents to obtain electronic devices on the grounds of online learning and normal entertainment, and some minors even steal their parents' devices for entertainment consumption during their parents' rest time." said Jiang Ying, vice president of the Beijing Internet Court. .
The reporter noticed that in the typical case released by the Beijing Internet Court, the minors who recharged and rewarded were basically elementary school students. They used their parents' mobile phones to register accounts, recharge games, reward anchors, and watch paid comics.
For example, without the knowledge of his parents, Xiao Liu, a primary school student, used his father's mobile phone number to register an account on the live broadcast platform operated by the defendant, and recharged more than 40,000 yuan in 8 days to purchase virtual gifts and give rewards on the live broadcast platform.
After the "uncovered incident", Xiao Liu's guardian sued in Xiao Liu's name, asking the court to confirm that the plaintiff Xiao Liu's recharge behavior at the defendant was invalid and order the defendant to return the recharge money.
The court held that the plaintiff was a minor, and the high-value top-up and reward behavior he performed was incompatible with his identity, age and economic status.
In the end, presided over by the court, the parties reached a settlement, and the defendant agreed to return the plaintiff's top-up money.
"In order to circumvent the platform's anti-addiction measures and consumption restrictions, minors often use the account of their guardian or other adult to register and log in, and some will delete the verification SMS prompt after consumption to prevent detection. Some also use the Internet to Shopping platforms buy adult accounts and recharge services." Jiang Ying said that minors bypassed supervision and certification measures, resulting in their use of online entertainment consumption time far exceeding the state's regulations for minors to use the Internet reasonably, and it will also lead to online entertainment. Addicted.
Some platforms leave it alone
The Beijing Internet Court pointed out that the cases involving minors involved online games, online live broadcasts, online videos, online social networking, e-commerce and other types of platforms. Content construction, complaint handling mechanism and other aspects still need to be improved.
For example, in terms of identity verification, the identity verification methods of some network service providers are relatively simple, and there is a lack of dynamic verification methods other than personal information collection.
Some network service providers still allow their recharge behaviors to be laissez-faire after they may learn that the user is a minor, and some network service providers provide services such as game account purchase and recharge on e-commerce platforms, which actually facilitates minors. Bypassing the anti-addiction measures of online games, e-commerce platforms are not supervising this.
The "Report" shows that in recent years, cyberbullying involving minors and violations of personality rights such as personal information and privacy have attracted increasing attention.
In the cases heard by the Beijing Internet Court, minors are both victims of the above-mentioned violations and perpetrators of the violations.
Some minors attack each other on the Internet due to conflicts within the school, expose others' portraits on short video platforms, social platforms, etc. or practice verbal violence against others; some minors' parents are in the class because of conflicts between their daughters and classmates. The group criticized other students with extreme remarks.
The reporter learned that under the influence of the "fan circle culture", some minors are keen on irrational star-chasing behaviors such as making lists, accusing and criticizing, anti-black and mutual pinch, and the problem of anomie in online speech is more prominent.
For example, in the case of a celebrity's right to reputation being violated, some minor defendants used obviously excessive remarks to insult the plaintiff and attacked him personally.
In cases involving minors' personality rights infringement, it is reflected that both minors and adults have insufficient network literacy and insufficient awareness of minors' protection.
"In cases involving juveniles, most of the parties showed a strong willingness to mediate, and the effect of relieving and resolving disputes was obvious." Jiang Ying said that the Beijing Internet Court has established a priority mediation mechanism for juvenile cases and strengthened the whole process of mediation. The proportion of mediation or self-conciliation under the auspices of the court reached 74.6%.
Multi-faceted efforts to strengthen protection
The "Statistical Report on Internet Development in China" shows that by the end of 2020, the number of netizens in my country has reached nearly 1 billion, and the number of minor netizens in China has reached 183 million, and the Internet penetration rate of minors has reached 94.9%.
How to strengthen the protection of minors online?
Jiang Ying suggested that multiple efforts should be made, and parents, schools, relevant market entities and relevant departments should take their responsibilities seriously.
Parents should improve their own network literacy, instruct minors to correctly use Internet protection software, smart terminal products, etc., manage personal electronic equipment and payment accounts, effectively perform guardianship duties, and create a good family environment for network use;
Relevant market players should strictly implement the requirements of laws and regulations, actively improve deficiencies in technical measures, identity verification, content management, complaint handling, etc., and actively provide online products and services that adapt to the laws and characteristics of minors' physical and mental health development;
Schools should strengthen network literacy education for minors, strengthen communication with parents, and properly handle campus disputes;
Relevant departments should further strengthen the performance of their functions, formulate relevant teaching indicators for network literacy, clarify relevant technical standards or requirements for minors' online protection software and intelligent terminal products specially designed for minors, and determine as soon as possible that the physical and mental health of minors may be affected. The specific type, scope, judgment standard and prompt method of the information.
It is understood that the Beijing Internet Court attaches great importance to the protection of minors, and adheres to the direction of professional development of juvenile trials.
At present, the Beijing Internet Court has formulated and promulgated the "Opinions on Strengthening Judicial Protection of Minors' Online Judicial Protection", and has put forward development plans in multiple directions to comprehensively strengthen the level of online protection for minors.
Focusing on the judicial protection of minors on the Internet, the "Shou Mu Future" brand was created, and the "Shou Mu Future" virtual chat room for minors was created, and the soft scene layout was used to relieve the tension and anxiety of the parties that may arise when they are questioned by the court.
At the same time, through various means such as adjudicating in accordance with the law, making judicial suggestions, establishing a talent pool for vice-principals under the rule of law, and issuing family education guidance orders, a multi-pronged approach has been adopted to guide all subjects in the whole society to improve the awareness and level of minors' online protection.