According to the FTC, one of the most common complaints from consumers regarding online shopping is that they've paid for an item that never actually arrived. Then there's the fact that the bill only targets trademark violations, not the many other scams consumers fall prey to when they're shopping online. In the most extreme interpretation, said Cara Gagliano, staff attorney for the EFF, a service like Gmail might be required to collect identification from users just in case they, say, arranged the sale of an old bike over email. The EFF in particular has expressed concern about the bill's broad definition of what constitutes a covered platform. (Disclosure: My husband works for Amazon).įor some critics of the bill, the concern is that it would entrench large players, including Amazon, who can more easily comply with the law while punishing smaller sellers and platforms. "We recognize the intent of this bill is to stop the sale of counterfeit goods, and we look forward to working with Congress to achieve that goal," the spokesperson said. But it's been decidedly less popular among digital rights groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and e-commerce companies like eBay and Etsy.Īmazon has also been lobbying on the bill, but a spokesperson wouldn't say whether the company supports or opposes it. That bill, which was co-sponsored by House Judiciary Committee chair Jerrold Nadler, sailed through that committee in a 30-8 vote in September, and has received widespread support from major brands, brick and mortar chains and retailer associations. Platforms that fail to adhere to these best practices would be subject to liability for trademark infringement when they're caught selling counterfeit goods that "implicate health and safety." Those best practices include, among other things, using automated tools to screen for counterfeit goods. It targets dangerous counterfeit goods by requiring a broad cross section of platforms to collect and display third party sellers' identities, locations and contact information and to adopt "best practices" for rooting out counterfeit products. The SHOP Safe Act, which was first introduced in 2020 and reintroduced this year, is by far the more stringent and controversial of the two. But they take markedly different approaches to solving the problem and are, not coincidentally, getting drastically different receptions from both the e-commerce industry and internet advocacy groups. The two bills - the SHOP Safe Act and the INFORM Consumers Act - are both bicameral and bipartisan, and they both target counterfeit and stolen goods. This uptick in e-commerce scams - particularly the rise of counterfeit medical and protective gear - has inspired lawmakers to introduce bills to mitigate fraud by requiring online marketplaces to collect and publish more information about their sellers and opening those platforms up to liability for failing to do so. But by far the most popular category of ripoff reported to the FTC lately has been related to online shopping, with more than 50,000 complaints rolling into the FTC during that period. Since January of last year, Americans have lost more than half a billion dollars to fraud, according to the FTC. The pandemic has been prime time for online scammers.
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