Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Beyond Section 230 Liability For Facebook, Nancy S. Kim

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In October 2021, a former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen, publicly revealed that the company's internal research documented harms that its products caused some of its users. The company’s response was sadly predictable. It questioned the reliability of Haugen’s testimony, asserted its commitment to doing the right thing, and then diverted the public’s attention by changing its name to Meta. The company’s deny-and-distract tactics were, by now, all too familiar and provided few answers.

More than any other platform company, Facebook has found itself at the center of controversy. Its advertisement-supported business model relies upon user engagement which means that …

The New Bailments, Danielle D’Onfro

Washington Law Review

The rise of cloud computing has dramatically changed how consumers and firms store their belongings. Property that owners once managed directly now exists primarily on infrastructure maintained by intermediaries. Consumers entrust their photos to Apple instead of scrapbooks; businesses put their documents on Amazon’s servers instead of in file cabinets; seemingly everything runs in the cloud. Were these belongings tangible, the relationship between owner and intermediary would be governed by the common-law doctrine of bailment. Bailments are mandatory relationships formed when one party entrusts their property to another. Within this relationship, the bailees owe the bailors a duty of care …

Algorithms In Business, Merchant-Consumer Interactions, & Regulation, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

Faculty Scholarship

The shift towards the use of algorithms in business has transformed merchant–consumer interactions. Products and services are increasingly tailored for consumers through algorithms that collect and analyze vast amounts of data from interconnected devices, digital platforms, and social networks. While traditionally merchants and marketeers have utilized market segmentation, customer demographic profiles, and statistical approaches, the exponential increase in consumer data and computing power enables them to develop and implement algorithmic techniques that change consumer markets and society as a whole. Algorithms enable targeting of consumers more effectively, in real-time, and with high predictive accuracy in pricing and profiling strategies. In …

Regulatory Approaches To Consumer Protection In The Financial Sector And Beyond: Toward A Smart Disclosure Regime?, Nydia Remolina, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez, Yvonne Ai-Chi Loh, David R. Hardoon

Centre for AI & Data Governance

Traditionally, consumer and data protection policies evolved from issues of consent and information disclosure. The purpose of these regulatory approaches is the protection of consumers by reducing some contracting failures, such as asymmetries of information and a lower bargaining power, especially in transactions involving complex issues such as financial products and sensitive personal data. In the past, regulators have responded to privacy and consumer protection by adopting what this paper refers to as an “imperfectly informed regime”, in which consumers do not receive full information about the risks associated with their decisions, even if they are still protected through a …

Internet Architecture And Disability, Blake E. Reid

Publications

The Internet is essential for education, employment, information, and cultural and democratic participation. For tens of millions of people with disabilities in the United States, barriers to accessing the Internet—including the visual presentation of information to people who are blind or visually impaired, the aural presentation of information to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and the persistence of Internet technology, interfaces, and content without regard to prohibitive cognitive load for people with cognitive and intellectual disabilities—collectively pose one of the most significant civil rights issues of the information age. Yet disability law lacks a comprehensive theoretical approach …

Disruptive Platforms, Margot Kaminski

Publications

No abstract provided.

Symposium: Regulatory Capture And Technological Entrepreneurship: Protecting Consumer Interests?, Robert Anderson, John G. Shearer, Christopher Koopman, Makan Delrahim, Erik Syverson, Babbette Boliek

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

No abstract provided.

The Sharing Economy And Consumer Protection Regulation: The Case For Policy Change, Christopher Koopman, Matthew Mitchell, Adam Thierer

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

In this Paper, we discuss the central benefit of the sharing economy thus far: it has overcome market imperfections without recourse to regulatory bodies prone to capture by entrenched firms. As an introduction to the various issues surrounding this ongoing debate, we begin with an explanation of the sharing economy. Then we review the traditional “consumer protection” rationales for economic regulation and explain why many regulations persist even though their initial justifications are no longer valid. We argue continued application of these outmoded regulatory regimes is likely to harm consumers. In the last section, we explain how the Internet and …

Who Regulates The Robots, Margot Kaminski

Publications

No abstract provided.

What Do We Worry About When We Worry About Price Discrimination? The Law And Ethics Of Using Personal Information For Pricing, Akiva A. Miller

Akiva A Miller

New information technologies have dramatically increased sellers’ ability to engage in retail price discrimination. Debates over using personal information for price discrimination frequently treat it as a single problem, and are not sufficiently sensitive to the variety of price discrimination practices, the different kinds of information they require in order to succeed, and the different ethical concerns they raise. This paper explores the ethical and legal debate over regulating price discrimination facilitated by consumers’ personal information. Various kinds of “privacy remedies”—self-regulation, technological fixes, state regulation, and legislating private causes of legal action—each have their place. By drawing distinctions between various …

E-Commerce And Electronic Payment System Risks: Lessons From Paypal, Lawrence J. Trautman

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

What are the major risks perceived by those engaged in e-commerce and electronic payment systems? What development risks, if they become reality, may cause substantial increases in operating costs or threaten the very survival of the enterprise? This article utilizes the relevant annual report disclosures from eBay (parent of PayPal), along with other eBay and PayPal documents, as a potentially powerful teaching device. Most of the descriptive language to follow is excerpted directly from eBay’s regulatory filings. My additions include weaving these materials into a logical presentation and providing supplemental sources for those who desire a deeper look (usually in …

Privacy, Transparency & Google's Blurred Glass, Jonathan I. Ezor

Jonathan I. Ezor

No matter the context or jurisdiction, one concept underlies every view of the best practices in data privacy: transparency. The mandate to disclose what personal information is collected, how it is used, and with whom and for what purpose it is shared, is essential to enable informed consent to the collection, along with the other user rights that constitute privacy best practices. Google, which claims to support and offer transparency, is increasingly opaque about its many products and services and the information they collect for it, posing a significant privacy concern.

Code, Crash, And Open Source: The Outsourcing Of Financial Regulation To Risk Models And The Global Financial Crisis, Erik F. Gerding

Publications

The widespread use of computer-based risk models in the financial industry during the last two decades enabled the marketing of more complex financial products to consumers, the growth of securitization and derivatives, and the development of sophisticated risk-management strategies by financial institutions. Over this same period, regulators increasingly delegated or outsourced vast responsibility for regulating risk in both consumer finance and financial markets to these privately owned industry models. Proprietary risk models of financial institutions thus came to serve as a "new financial code" that regulated transfers of risk among consumers, financial institutions, and investors.

The spectacular failure of financial-industry …

Protecting The Digital Consumer: The Limits Of Cyberspace Utopianism, John Rothchild

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.