Trust Over Time on the Internet Peter Swire Moritz College of Law Penn Law School

1. Trust Over Time on the Internet Peter Swire Moritz College of Law Penn Law School Symposium on the Evolving Internet October 19, 2012

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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