Author(s)
Robert W. Hahn and Anne Layne-Farrar
Source
AEI-Brookings Joint Center Working Paper No. 01-14, 2001
Summary
This paper asks if legislators should pass online privacy legislation.
Policy Relevance
The authors caution that a broad approach to regulating how online businesses use consumer information could hurt technology and growth, with few gains.
Main Points
- The authors favor evaluating the need for privacy regulation online on a case by case basis, considering the costs to privacy and benefits to consumers.
- The European Union’s Data Protection Directive Network regulates consumer information across the board, and slows the growth of new technology and business methods like outsourcing.
- Policymakers should
- Consider legislative proposals’ economic effects for dynamic technology.
- Target laws to specific concerns.
- Treat online and offline businesses the same.
- Recognize that businesses have reasons to provide suitable online privacy notices without regulation.
- Be very cautious about requiring opt-in, the rule that consumers must explicitly agree to a site’s information use or sharing.
- Give consumers a right to access their information, which would have few benefits and add many costs.
- Limit lawsuits and other enforcement mechanisms.