Digital Disregard: A Case for Amending Québec's Children Advertising Legislation.

This article examines how Québec's Consumer Protection Act (CPA), which since 1978 has prohibited advertising to children under 13, applies to modern digital advertising practices, focusing on loot-box microtransactions in Electronic Arts' FIFA video game series. It argues that FIFA's promotion of loot boxes—randomized in-game purchases often likened to gambling—constitutes advertising targeted at children, violating sections 248 and 249 of the CPA. The article highlights challenges in regulating digital advertising due to the CPA's emphasis on temporal and spatial criteria, which are less effective in online environments where children have constant access. Drawing on international regulatory approaches from the European Union, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, and South Korea, it recommends updating Québec's CPA to explicitly include digital advertising formats, enforce transparency through probability disclosures, and reconsider the definition and enforcement of advertising to better protect children in the digital age.