Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Cooling-Off And Secondary Markets: Consumer Choice In The Digital Domain, Michael Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article studies the law and economics of cooling-off periods and secondary markets for online media. The discussion is fueled by a current debate: In July 2009, the online retail juggernaut, Amazon.com, remotely deleted literary classics from consumers’ portable “Kindle” reading devices. The public outcry and class-action lawsuit that followed have reinvigorated an ongoing debate about how much control digital media distributors should wield. Pundits and plaintiffs argue that too often, digital distributors like Amazon impair consumer freedom by misusing Digital Rights Management (DRM) software systems. However, these same systems could also provide significant benefits that have largely gone ignored. …