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Trust Over Time on the Internet
Peter SwireMoritz College of Law
Penn Law SchoolSymposium on the Evolving Internet
October 19, 2012
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Gus Hurwitz Paper on Trust• Hurwitz:
– “Historically, Internet has been built upon trust”
– “Internet is increasingly a post-trust architecture”
• Swire:
– Trust has been a big issue on the Internet at least since the start of E-Commerce
– Trust architecture in most ways is stronger now than in the past
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Previous Episodes on Trust• “Trustwrap” (2003)
– Trust on eBay began with reputation– Over time, multiple additional trust-building
mechanisms, such as escrow• Penn Symposium 2005: “Elephants and Mice
Revisited: Law and Choice of Law on the Internet”– “Elephants” are subject to legal rules and create
trust-enhancing mechanisms– As problems arise, trust responses arise
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Trust Builds Over Time
• Lack of F2F from start of E-Commerce
• Brand
• Credence goods to experience goods– PayPal and credit cards online
• Internet time and adaptive protection, on both seller and buyer side
• 2 billion users and continued growth
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Trust Institutions Build Over Time
• Elephants – Law and consent decrees– Complaint departments, take-downs
• Experience rating and fraud detection– Risk scores for transactions
• Time for law to develop– $50 rule as example of consumer protection– CAN-SPAM– Boilerplate
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Sources of Decline in Trust?
• Actions on the Net are more important, so we are less tolerant of risk– Critical infrastructure protection
• Complexity and difficulty of monitoring by consumers
• Perhaps creators of distrust (cyber-attackers) are winning in the cat-and-mouse game
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Conclusion
• Every four years we hear “this is the most crucial election of our lifetime”
• We similarly have today’s round of challenges to trust on the Internet
• Let’s be clear what today’s challenges are, without having to say they are worse now than they have ever been