Many predict tremendous growth in the economic significance of electronic commerce. But consumers today express mounting fears that doing business in the borderless world of cyberspace increases their exposure to unfair marketing practices, unsafe products, insecure payment methods, loss of personal privacy, and lack of reliable redress. News reports regularly trumpet the dangers consumers may face to take advantage of the greater choice and lower prices electronic commerce offers. A new paradigm -- whether market-based, regulatory, or a combination of both -- is necessry to ensure that consumers feel sufficiently protected to make it possible for electronic commerce to prosper.
Carey Heckman, professor of law (consulting) at Stanford Law School and co-director of the Stanford Law and Technology Policy Center, will present a guided tour of the principal consumer protection issues raised by electronic commerce and explore the policy and technology decisions that must be faced.
Professor Heckman was the general chair of the Fifth Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy. Before coming to Stanford in 1992, he was vice president and senior corporate counsel and director of messaging products marketing at Novell Incorporated and a partner in the Palo Alto law firm of Ware & Freidenrich (now known as Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich). He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1976 and Northwestern University Law School in 1979.