Cyberspace: Consumer Protection Issues

Draft, April 7, 1996

Presented at the American Council on Consumer Interests Meeting

Thursday, March 28, Nashville, TN

A shorter version of this paper will be published in the 1996 issue of Consumer Interests Annual

Sherman Hanna, Professor
Consumer Sciences Department

The Ohio State University

Introduction

 


In a sense, consumer protection has been a problem since humans first started trading 10,000 years ago. However, the explosive growth in cyberspace has led to some new problems and challenges for consumer protection. Cyberspace used to mean limited access to text-based email and reference material for the few who had Internet access through universities and government agencies, plus the relatively orderly and monitored information available through online services such as CompuServe, America Online, and Prodigy. Today, however, direct access to the Internet, especially the graphics oriented material on the Worldwide Web, plus access to the Internet through the online services, makes the online services small players in cyberspace (Eng, 1996; Sandberg & Ziegler, 1996). With online services, there was the potential of holding the provider responsible for consumer protection problems, as one might attempt to hold a television network or magazine responsible for the deceptions of advertisers. The Internet is basically anarchy, however, with the number of "publishers" of web pages approaching one million.
 
 

Commerce is growing in cyberspace, especially as methods are developed to make credit card transactions reasonably safe (Rupley, 1996). There is still some controversy about how safe transactions are (Sandberg, 1996) but the majority opinion seems to be that the major credit card companies have developed methods that are at least as safe as handing a waiter your credit card in a restaurant (Holland, 1996).
 
 

What is Unique About Cyberspace?

Cyberspace is a medium that attracts people with above-average education and income. It is also such a new medium that government regulation has not kept pace with it, although there has been a start (Salt Lake City Tribune, 1996). In the United States and some other countries, the growth of cyberspace comes at a time when there are budgetary and ideological pressures to reduce government regulation, so it is unlikely that there will be any substantial amount of policing in the near future. In contrast to print media, information in cyberspace can change almost continuously, so proving fraud may be difficult.
 
 

Cyberspace is also a borderless phenomena. A Commissioner of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission pointed out that "(T)echnological advances in telecommunications and finance allow scam artists in one country to communicate easily with victims in another country and to transfer their ill-gotten gains from one country to another." (Starek, 1995). It will be very difficult for governments to regulate commerce in cyberspace.
 
 

What role should the government play in consumer protection in cyberspace? Judge Richard Posner stated:

 It might seem that the availability of legal remedies would be unimportant; that the market remedies against misrepresentation would be adequate in consumer and all other markets (Posner, 1992, p. 110).

 If consumers are informed, or if repeat sales are important, market forces may tend to correct problems for consumers. However, consumer dealings with anonymous cyberspace merchants may not fit Posner's prescription for laissez-faire.
 
 

Sources of Major Consumer Problems in Cyberspace

Rather than considering all possible consumer protection issues in cyberspace, it may be useful to consider fundamental sources of consumer protection problems. Ignorance is an obvious candidate for a source of consumer protection problems. However, if a consumer is ignorant but skeptical, damage may be limited. Various human weaknesses, when combined with ignorance, may lead to many types of consumer protection problems. This paper will focus on three major types of human weaknesses that are associated with consumer protection problems in cyberspace: greed, the desire for a cure to medical problems, and lust.
 
 

Greed and Investing

Cyberspace offers may opportunities for investors (Hannon, 1996; Rupley, 1995) although there are still information gaps (Middleton, 1996) and outright deceptions (Weiss, 1995). One problem with investing fraud is that it might take a long time for an investor to discover that there is a problem. For investors in the United States, all of the regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission should apply, but there is obviously a difference between trying to recover funds from your local stock broker and some cyberspace boiler room operator. The general problem predates cyberspace by many years, perhaps dating back to when long distance telephone calls became relatively cheap. Investors may ignore common sense because of their own greed to beat the market.
 
 

Consumer education may provide some help. Even if there is still some controversy about the Efficient Market Theory (Malkiel, 1995), stress of that concept may inoculate some investors against either an attractive looking web page offer or a smooth talking swindler on a cold call.
 
 

Medical Cures

There are a large number of medical web sites and Usenet groups in Cyberspace, many of which are worthwhile. However, there are also a large number of dubious web sites. For instance, one company in the Ukraine offered a magnetic device that is said to cure sexual dysfunctions and various other ills. The consumer merely needed to send $99 by Western Union to the address listed. The advantage of cyberspace over 800 numbers for such orders is that working knowledge of written English is much wider than fluency in spoken English. Therefore, scam artists can operate from any country that has Internet connections. There have been some regulatory and judicial actions against dubious medical advertising (e.g., against an Internet advertisement claiming an AIDS cure) but the number of claims is so large that regulatory agencies would have difficulty acting against more than a tiny fraction of them.
 
 

Lust and Cyberporn

Pornography helped build the Web -- the multimedia communications available from one's home or office computer can allow the curious or obsessed consumer to view and hear things that a local government might restrict, or that would otherwise only be offered in dangerous neighborhoods in large cities. Every type of pornography is available on the Web, and although there are still free samples and some offerings by amateur exhibitionists, credit card payments and international "900" numbers are the popular methods of restricting access. There have been some problems reported with the international "900" numbers, with bills of hundreds of dollars possible for a relatively short call.
 
 

Pornography in cyberspace is the ultimate form of borderless commerce. No physical shipment of goods is necessary, as even movies (albeit crude or short with today's technology) can be transmitted over the Internet. The key ingredient is the method of payment, which may offer the only form of consumer protection other than not patronizing a deceptive vendor again. The potential for government sponsored consumer protection for consumers of pornography is probably very limited in any case, as many consumers would not want any publicity and would prefer to suffer in silence even if ripped off for hundreds of dollars. The local telephone company and the credit card company do offer the potential for dealing with deceptive marketing, as a consumer may contest "900" type calls and also credit card charges.
 

Government to the Rescue?

Government agencies obviously have a role to play, and are slowly starting to pay attention to the cyberspace phenomena (Yang, 1996). Government has only limited resources to police cyberspace. With the number of web pages approaching ten million, consumer protection is very difficult. For some consumer problems in the U.S., such as product safety, civil actions, such as medical malpractice and product liability cases can help reduce the extent of consumer problems in the long run. Civil actions are not likely to be effective against the international and/or fly-by-night nature of cyberspace commerce.
 
 

Credit Card Companies to the Rescue?

Given that most cyberspace commerce is conducted through credit cards, it may be that credit card companies will provide the greatest assistance to consumers. It is no accident that Mastercard is one of the sponsors (along with the FTC, the National Consumers League, the National Association of Attorneys General, and several other credit card companies) of a Web Page for the National Fraud Information Center, which solicits complaints about cyberspace fraud. If the major credit card companies would act against merchants who cheat consumers, there would be a powerful force against fraud in cyberspace.
 
 

Internet Providers to the Rescue?

Before a few years ago, on-line services such as CompuServe, Prodigy and America Online played a major role in cyberspace commerce. If that pattern had continued, it might have been possible for these services to play the type of consumer protection role that the major television networks played in the past and to some extent today, and that the major magazines used to play. In that world, there would be at least some screening by the provider (or network or magazine.) Now, however, the Worldwide Web makes that type of screening very difficult. The attempt by the 1996 Telecommunications Act to hold internet providers responsible for access to pornographic content by minors may provide a model for an approach to consumer protection problems. On the other hand, the controversy and legal challenges to that Act may mean that this type of solution is unlikely to be applied to consumer protection.
 
 

Search Engines to the Rescue?

The main way that consumers find commercial sites is through using a search engine or index. For instance, under Yahoo!, one can either search, or use its index of topics. One can quickly get to providers of dubious medical cures through the Yahoo! index. If judges found that search engines had some legal liability for fraudulent commercial services, or such liability were legislated, some consumer protection might be provided.
 
 

Conclusions

Cyberspace is changing so rapidly that it is difficult to project the future more than a few months in advance. Clearly, international agreements are needed, and the application of existing laws against fraud to Cyberspace must be clarified. However, consumer education and private industry initiatives may provide the most protection.
 
 

References


 


Eng, P. M. (1996). War of the Web. Business Week. (March 4,) pp. 71-72.
 
 

Hannon, K. (1996). Bonanza on the Net. U.S. News and World Report. (Jan. 29,) pp. 86-88.
 
 

Holland, K. (1996). More hacker-proof than thou. Business Week. (Feb. 19,) p. 34.
 
 

Malkiel, B. G. (1995). A random walk down Wall Street. New York: W. W. Norton.
 
 

Middleton, T. (1996). Lots of data, many gaps in on-line research. New York Times. (Feb. 18,) p. F3.
 
 

Posner, Richard A. Economic Analysis of Law, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1992(Fourth edition).

Rupley, S. (1996). Mastercard and Visa join forces for Net commerce. PC Magazine. (March 26,), p. 34.
 
 

Sandberg, J. (1996). Major flaw in Internet security system is discovered by two Purdue students. Wall Street Journal. (Feb. 21,) p. C17.
 
 

Sandberg, J. & Ziegler, B. (1996). Web trap: Internet's popularity threatens to swamp the on-line services. Wall Street Journal, (Jan. 18,) p. A1, A9.
 
 

Salt Lake City Tribune (1996). S. L. firm faces charge over ad. (March 16,) p. B-5.
 
 

Starek, R. B., III (1995). Consumer protection in the age of borderless markets and the Information Revolution. Speech at the Conference on Transborder Consumer Regulation and Enforcement, Canberra, Australia.
 
 

Weiss, G. (1995). The hustlers queue up on the net: Penny-stock scam artists are surging online. Business Week. (Nov. 20,) pp. 146-147.
 
 

Yang, C. (1996). How do you police cyberspace? The FTC's Varney wants Net folk to help write the rulebook. Business Week. (Feb. 5,) pp. 97-98.