Identify major public safety and welfare issues raised by e-commerce.
Critical public safety and welfare issues in e-commerce include:
• The protection of children and strong sentiments against pornography. Several
attempts by Congress to legislate in this area have been struck down as unconstitutional.
The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires
schools and libraries in the United States to install “technology protection measures”
(filtering software) in an effort to shield children from pornography, has,
however, been upheld by the Supreme Court.
• Efforts to control gambling and restrict sales of cigarettes and drugs. In the
United States, cigarettes, gambling, medical drugs, and addictive recreational
drugs are either banned or tightly regulated by federal and state laws. Yet these
products and services are often distributed via offshore e-commerce sites operating
beyond the jurisdiction of federal and state prosecutors. At this point, it is
not clear that the Web will remain borderless or that e-commerce can continue
to flaunt national, state, and local laws with impunity.