FTC Moves Towards Do-It-Yourself Regulation Model

from the does-that-work? dept

Tue, Nov 7th 2006 8:24pm — Mike Masnick

The FTC is admitting that their job has become a lot more difficult lately with the growth of the internet and online advertisements. It's a lot harder for the organization to keep up with what's being done to trick consumers -- so it sounds like they're hoping the industry takes care of the scammers themselves. As has been seen with the CAN SPAM debacle, that may not be such a bad idea. However, there are times when businesses and self-regulation clearly aren't enough. Witness the recent situation with Zango. Despite plenty of public humiliation and evidence of wrongdoing, the company made very few substantial changes to stop surreptitious installs of their adware. Eventually, the FTC had to step in and fine the company -- though, even then, some are wondering how effective the fine will be. So is there a better answer? More government oversight tends to lead to waste and bureaucracy, but self-regulation alone doesn't seem to be stopping scammers -- and as those scammers get more and more effective can we rely on an FTC that just says that the industry will sort itself out?

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Say No to Crack, 7 Nov 2006 @ 9:23pm

Complaint site?
There has to be some way the FTC could create a single internet fraud/scam complaint site. My thought is that consumers would login to this site and add their complaint (with the company name and website for which their complaining). When the # of complaints hit some predefined minimum, the FTC investigates.

Seems like this would greatly reduce the FTC's workload without increasing government oversight. Win/Win for everyone.
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`Zidane Tribal, 8 Nov 2006 @ 1:22am

Re: Complaint site?
hmmm, seems like a good idea. simple, but effective.
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pudro, 8 Nov 2006 @ 1:36am

Re: Complaint site?
Why wouldn't these violators just submit endless complaints about innocent others, thereby negating its usefulness of the system?
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Protoplasm, 8 Nov 2006 @ 3:34am

pudro just spammed!
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Sanguine Dream, 8 Nov 2006 @ 5:21am

Re: Complaint site?
That sounds like a good idea. Problem is that the fraudulent sites that got investigated would just go to the governent crying that they are being persecuted. And if there are enough of them they just might get ballsy enough to try to file a some sort of lawsuit (and create a big mess like that Spamhaus I think it was called) since that seems to be the corporate creedo these days.

I didn't mean to rain on your parade, it really does sound like a good base idea to start with though.
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Steven, 8 Nov 2006 @ 7:41am

Why the 'do something' desease?
Why does the FTC have to 'do something' about this? To me this looks like a problem of the people who end up with this crap on their computers. If it causes damages, sue the company. If it's just annoyance, deal with it or learn not to get the crap.
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