AFFIRMATIVE — COUNTERPLAN — FREE MARKET — ANSWERS 92

THE FREE MARKET WILL NOT SOLVE FOR PRIVACY

THE FREE MARKET WILL NOT SOLVE THE PRIVACY PROBLEM

William D. Chalmers, The San Francisco Chronicle, APRIL 30, 2000, SECTION: SUNDAY CHRONICLE; Pg. 1/Z1 TITLE: There's No Business Like Your Business // acs-EE2001

The free markets' invisible hand will not solve this problem, simply because there's no money in not gathering marketing data about potential clients. In fact, it's commercial suicide. The whole point of gathering more and more information and repackaging it (a.k.a. value-added judgments about you) is so that they can deliver their goods and services more profitably, er, efficiently.

MARKET BASED APPROACH TO PRIVACY PROTECTION IS NOT ADEQUATE

Leslie Miller; Elizabeth Weise USA TODAY, March 31, 1999, SECTION: LIFE; Pg. 4D TITLE: Keeping 'pry' out of the privacy debate New tools help consumers protect personal data from an encroaching Web // acs-EE2001

Some say people who don't like a site's privacy policy can simply go elsewhere, but Mulligan isn't so sure.

"Shopping with your feet is a very limited protection," she says. "If you don't know what somebody's doing, it's very hard to tell them you disagree with it."

MARKET APPROACHES TO INTERNET PRIVACY PROTECTION FAIL

Business Week, March 20, 2000 SECTION: COVER STORY; ONLINE PRIVACY; Number 3673; Pg. 82 TITLE: It's Time for Rules in Wonderland // acs-VT2001

In the March BUSINESS WEEK/Harris Poll, 57% of respondents said government should pass laws on how personal information is collected. ''What's going on today is exponentially more threatening to those who want to protect privacy,'' says Eliot Spitzer, New York's state attorney general who has proposed privacy legislation. People can't make informed decisions on the Net because they lack the necessary information. ''What we're confronting is a market failure,'' says Spitzer.

RELYING ON THE MARKET TO PROTECT PRIVACY IS A TERRIBLE PLAN

Suzanne M. Thompson, "The Digital Explosion Comes With a Cost: The Loss of Privacy," Journal of Technology Law and Policy, Spring 1999, 4 J. Tech. L. & Pol'y 3, EE2001-JGM, P.84

Although market forces may play a role in protecting privacy, relying heavily on market forces is a mistake. n224 Some argue that free market forces will not discipline commercial practices, especially in instances where there is no direct relationship between the customer and the entity collecting or using personal information. n225 Furthermore, many companies do not wish to implement any self-regulatory standards. n226 Even the few company policies that exist to protect personal information are often invisible; citizens are not aware of them and cannot use them to access, check, or correct their personal information.

MARKET REGULATION OF INFORMATIONAL PRIVACY FAILS BECAUSE OF THE COLLECTIVE ACTION PROBLEM

Gregory Shaffer, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School, Winter, 2000; Journal of International Law, 25 Yale J. Int'l L. 1 , "Globalization and Social Protection: The Impact of EU and International Rules in the Ratcheting Up of U.S. Privacy Standards," EE2001-hxm lxnx

The implementation of data privacy protection to enhance electronic commerce, however, raises another collective action problem. While all companies may collectively benefit if they all implement data privacy controls, individual companies may not implement them in order to profit from using and selling personal information. To the extent that all companies do not collectively enhance data privacy protections, consumers may be wary of engaging in any e-commerce, even with companies implementing protections. Accordingly, the purpose of the Canadian data privacy protection bill now being considered before the Canadian parliament is not solely to "protect" privacy, but rather "to support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed." Act to Support and Promote Electronic Commerce by Protecting Personal Information, Bill C54, The House of Commons of Canada (1999) (visited Apr. 4, 1999)

MARKET REGULATION OF PRIVACY FAILS AND EXACERBATES UNEQUAL ACCESS TO INFORMATION

Gregory Shaffer, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School, Winter, 2000; Journal of International Law, 25 Yale J. Int'l L. 1, "Globalization and Social Protection: The Impact of EU and International Rules in the Ratcheting Up of U.S. Privacy Standards," EE2001-hxm lxnx

Like efforts to regulate privacy through legislation and court intervention, however, private contract and market models proffer no panacea. [*33] Markets, not surprisingly, are imperfect: Knowledge is expensive and parties have unequal access to information. The market for data privacy protection is characterized by widely dispersed individuals, with low stakes, n136 entering into ad hoc transactions with large enterprises. Enterprises know how they will exploit personal information; individuals do not. Enterprises repeatedly use individual information; individuals are only intermittently aware of privacy intrusions. Individuals have highly imperfect information upon which they can improve only at considerable cost. For each individual, the aggregate of these costs exceeds the value of the individual's privacy interest. To investigate the privacy practices of every business with which one contracts for a product or service costs time and, in market terms, time is money. Individuals thus forego investigating enterprise behavior and forget contracting.