旧法律如何回应新事物?——竞价排名的规制经验与教训

How Should Old Laws Respond to New Things?Experience and Lessons from Regulating Paid Ranking Business Model

法律不能朝令夕改,但社会生活却日新月异,当稳定的法律遭遇动态变化的新技术和新商业模式时,一个无法回避的问题迎面而来,即旧法律如何应对新事物?以竞价排名的商业模式为例,这种由网络搜索技术催生的新商业模式给市场规制法带来了诸多挑战,法律上的回应须充分尊重商业创新的动态发展规律。在此理念之下,规制者首先要遵从市场失灵理论,在自制与规制之间作出理性选择。其次要把握恰当的规制时机,既要避免因过早干预而扼杀创新,又要避免因消极回避而引发不可逆的危害后果。最后则是规制体制的选择,总体上应遵循“对策与问题相匹配”的规制原理,若发现旧法与新事物不匹配,应以实验性规制理念来进行制度设计,通过不断改进规制标准来探寻妥当的规制体制。

Laws cannot be amended day by day,but social life changes rapidly.When stable laws encounter new technologies and business model innovations,an unavoidable problem comes up,that is,how should old laws respond to new things?Taking paid ranking business model as an example.This new business model promoted by Internet search engine technology has brought many challenges to the law of market regulation.The legal response should fully respect the dynamic nature of business innovation.In this approach,regulators should first make a rational choice between private governance and legal regulation according to the market failure theory.The second thing is to choose the timing of regulation so as to avoid stifling innovation due to premature intervention and irreversible harmful consequences caused by negative avoidance.At last,the designing of regulatory regime should follow the principle of“matching countermeasures with problems”.If the old law does not match the new thing,the regulator should take the experimental regulation approach to improve regulatory standard and explore appropriate regulatory regime.