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Full-Text Articles in Law
Internet Nondiscrimination Principles: Commercial Ethics For Carriers And Search Engines, Frank Pasquale
Internet Nondiscrimination Principles: Commercial Ethics For Carriers And Search Engines, Frank Pasquale
Frank A. Pasquale
Unaccountable power at any layer of online life can stifle innovation elsewhere. Dominant search engines rightly worry that carriers will use their control of the physical layer of internet infrastructure to pick winners among content and application providers. Though they advocate net neutrality, they have been much less quick to recognize the threat to openness and fair play their own practices may pose. Just as dominant search engines fear an unfairly tiered online world, they should be required to provide access to their archives and indices in a nondiscriminatory manner. If dominant search engines want carriers to disclose their traffic …
Costing A Pretty Penny: Online Penny Auctions Revive The Pestilence Of Unregulated Lotteries, David R. Konkel
Costing A Pretty Penny: Online Penny Auctions Revive The Pestilence Of Unregulated Lotteries, David R. Konkel
Seattle University Law Review
Penny auctions, an online phenomenon imported from Europe, operate by the hundreds in the United States without meaningful oversight from consumer protection agencies. In a penny auction, consumers compete for items one penny at a time. To date, no significant inquiry, either academic or practical, into the legitimacy of the penny auction has occurred. Although marketed as auctions, online penny auctions may actually qualify as lotteries. Unlike the multifarious and confusing definitions of gambling, the long-accepted definition of a lottery consists of three elements: prize, consideration, and chance. If a penny auction satisfies this definition then, under well-established case law …