{"id":4699,"date":"2016-10-13T13:39:51","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T17:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=4699"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:52:59","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:52:59","slug":"circumventing-federal-regulation-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/circumventing-federal-regulation-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Circumventing Federal Regulation: The Advent of Shadow Regulation on the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new trend in the seemingly lawless land of the internet are controls that regulate how we use the internet.\u00a0 These shadow regulations<\/a><\/span>, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation has dubbed them, are now increasingly being established through private industry agreements.\u00a0 They are typically voluntary agreements between companies, unknown to the public, and affect activities conducted on the web.\u00a0 The regulations stand to take the place of several somewhat failed government attempts to regulate internet usage, such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), but are now presenting unforeseen problems in the marketplace.
\nThe government\u2019s previous initiatives have proved largely unworkable due to the complicated nature of creating and passing legislation that addresses the constantly evolving internet landscape.\u00a0 Therefore, self-regulating private deals often fill the gaps<\/a><\/span> where legislation ends and current issues arise.\u00a0 One main advantage to self-governance is that industries are more familiar with their respective markets and thus better equipped to regulate them.\u00a0 Compared to generalized guidance from the federal government, this enables more workable solutions to be made for specific industries.\u00a0 It can also be more adept at identifying and deterring illegal conduct in specific markets and is able to stop such behavior outside the criminal and civil law.\u00a0 Despite these advantages, self-regulation also comes with big problems.
\nThis regulation has created disadvantages for the public, leading industries to use shadow regulation in order to control prices and dominate the market with certain products.\u00a0 The pharmaceutical industry is a major player in creating these private deals<\/a><\/span> and uses them to keep the price of drugs from dropping as well as regulating the number of generics that enter the market.\u00a0 Big pharmaceutical companies have been hard at work to stop consumers from buying cheaper generic drugs online, often from foreign nations.\u00a0 While federal law already prohibits the importation of drugs from foreign countries, federal regulation is not meeting big pharma\u2019s standards and has prompted them to take matters into their own hands.
\nThe big pharmaceutical industries have been working<\/a><\/span> with payment processors, internet platforms, delivery providers, and domain name companies to create a shadow regulation for the industry.\u00a0 For example, a pharmaceutical industry will create a private agreement with Paypal (online payment provider), Google (internet platform), UPS (delivery provider), and GoDaddy (domain name company) to secretly regulate what pharmaceuticals can be bought online.\u00a0 The pharmaceutical companies are bound together through membership in groups such as Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP) and the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies (CSIP).\u00a0 These groups work to keep counterfeit and fake drugs out of the U.S., but also block legitimate overseas online pharmacies from selling drugs to Americans.\u00a0 While this in accord with federal regulations, the effect on consumers is significant.<\/p>\n

The public has no legal recourse if they wish to take action against these regulations because it is outside the legal realm, with no oversight or accountability.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 
\nThere are benefits and pitfalls of shadow regulation.\u00a0 Shadow regulation is making it easier for the federal government to keep tabs on internet usage by allowing them to be a part of these agreements without having to go through the strenuous process of passing new legislation.\u00a0 This provides them with a somewhat \u201chands off\u201d way of preventing people from using the internet in undesirable ways and circumventing federal laws, e.g. importing counterfeit drugs online.\u00a0 But, it can also lead to cyberanarchy<\/a><\/span> by placing regulation in the hands of a powerful few who will dominate their respective markets through agreements between companies.\u00a0 \u00a0A balance between these interests is needed to provide a safe while unobtrusive solution to regulate internet usage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new trend in the seemingly lawless land of the internet are controls that regulate how we use the internet.\u00a0 These shadow regulations, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation has dubbed them, are now increasingly being established through private industry agreements.\u00a0 They are typically voluntary agreements between companies, unknown to the public, and affect activities conducted …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4700,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7161,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699\/revisions\/7161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}