pop ups, cookies, spam

Pop-Ups, Cookies, and Spam: Toward a Deeper Analysis of the Ethical Significance of InternetMarketing PracticesAuthor(s): Daniel E. PalmerSource: Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 58, No. 1/3, Promoting Business Ethics (Apr. - May,2005), pp. 271-280Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25123518 .

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Journal of Business Ethics (2005) 58: 271-280

DOI 10.1007/sl0551-005-1421-8

? Springer 2005

Pop-Ups, Cookies, and Spam: Toward

a Deeper Analysis of the Ethical

Significance of Internet Marketing Practices Daniel E. Palmer

ABSTRACT. Wh?e e-commerce has grown rapidly in

recent years, some of the practices associated with certain

aspects of marketing on the Internet, such as pop-ups,

cookies, and spam, have raised concerns on the part of

Internet users. In this paper I examine the nature of these

practices and what I take to be the underlying source of

this concern. I argue that the ethical issues surrounding

these Internet marketing techniques move us beyond the

traditional treatment of the ethics of marketing and

advertising found in discussions of business ethics previ

ously. Rather, I show that the questions they raise ulti

mately turn upon questions of technique and the ways in

which technologies can transform the fundamental means

by which relationships are estabUshed and maintained

within a social environment. I then argue that the tech

niques of e-commerce are indeed transforming the means

by which businesses relate to consumers, and that this

transformation is affecting the applicab?ity of our previ ous ways of demarcating the imperatives determining the

limits of accessib?ity between consumers and businesses.

Properly addressing the ethical status of the techniques of

e-marketing as such necessarily moves us to consider the

changes that Internet commerce are having upon the

norms that govern individuals in their relations with

others.

KEY WORDS: Pop-ups, cookies, spam, e-commerce,

marketing ethics, privacy, property, autonomy

Introduction

While the Internet was originally developed for

governmental and educational purposes, its com

mercial potential was quickly realized and as a result

Internet commerce has grown at exponential rates in

recent years.1 By 2002, 67 million Americans were

buying products on-line, and Internet sales of all

kinds have skyrocketed in recent years (Stead and

Gilbert, 2001). Perhaps the most significant changes that e-commerce has brought to the business world

concern the means technologies available on the

Internet give marketers to identify and reach

potential consumers. While the mutual benefits

e-commerce provides

consumers and sellers explains

the continued growth of Internet business, some of

the techniques used in marketing and advertising on

the Internet, such as spamming, pop-ups, and

cookies, have been received less than enthusiastically

by the general pubhc (Hafner, 2003). Recent efforts

at both the federal and state levels to enact legislation

regulating spam e-mailing testify to the general sense

of concern that many people have in regards to such

cyber marketing techniques (Swartz, 2003). How

ever, while a clear sense of dissatisfaction can be

garnered within the public discussion surrounding e-commerce related issues, there is less clarity as to

the deeper underlying issues involved with concern

over these practices. Indeed, by and large, those

responding to ethical issues involved in e-commerce

have tended to view the issues in a piecemeal fashion

without exploring the underlying philosophical is

sues involved in the transformation of commerce

brought about by Internet technologies. In this

Daniel E. Palmer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of

Philosophy at Kent State University, Trumbull Campus. His previous scholarly publications include articles on issues in

ethical theory, aesthetics, and business ethics. His current

research interests in business ethics focus on issues concerning

the organizational and social foundations of business practices.



272 Daniel E. Palmer

paper I wiU argue precisely for the need for such a

deeper ph?osophical analysis if we are properly to

come to terms with the ethical ramifications of the

technologies of e-commerce and the implications

they have for our understanding of the underlying norms that govern business relationships. My aim is

threefold. One, I wish to show that the techniques of internet marketing raise ethical questions that go

beyond the standard concerns raised in relation to

these topics in discussions of marketing in business

ethics previously, and that we cannot thus simply

apply our previous analyses of these issues to the

distinctive world of e-commerce. Two, to argue

that we need to think about the issues raised by e-commerce primarily in terms of questions of

technological transformation. Addressing issues of

e-commerce primarily in terms of the use of tech

nology, I argue, more fi?ly reveals what is at the

heart of the matter with our concern with many of

the specific practices involved. And, third, I wish to

explore how the transformations that Internet

technologies are bringing about in e-commerce have

wide implications for many of the basic concepts that

have governed moral and legal discussions of rela

tionships between consumers and businesses in the

past. Here, I look at some specific ways in which

traditional concepts are being affected by this trans

formation and how we might begin to respond to

the ethical implications of these changes in a way that is sensitive to the philosophical chaUenges in

volved.

Marketing on the web: The techniques of

e-commerce

Until recently, most discussions of normative issues

in marketing and advertising ethics have concen

trated upon a few narrow topics. For the most part, the ethical issues associated with marketing centered

on two main issues: deceptive and/or manipulative

advertising and the marketing of harmful or non

beneficial products. An informal survey of several of

the major textbooks available on business ethics

confirms this view. In regards to the first category,

every text surveyed carried articles and case studies

dealing with deception in advertising. Topics dis

cussed in this regard typicaUy included such topics as

puffery, exaggeration, concealment of information,

and psychological manipulation in advertising.

Likewise, aU of the textbooks dealt with issues

involving the marketing of harmful or non-benefi

cial products, such as tobacco, alcohol, fast food, or

nutritional supplements. Of course, the two issues

mentioned above are in practice often intertwined as

weU, since the most questionable advertising in

terms of its deceptive nature is often used to market

products of the most questionable benefit to the

consumer. However, I would argue that there is a

deeper conceptual link between these two categories as weU: for in each case the underlying ethical

concern turns upon issues involving the nature of the

product or service being marketed. In the first case,

because it is felt that the advertising undermines the

rational ability of a consumer to evaluate the nature

of that product or service and in the second case

because of the very nature of the product or service

being marketed itself. As the issue reaUy turns in

both of these instances upon the product or the way in which the product is presented to the consumer in

the marketing campaign in question, I wiU term

ethical questions of these nature ethical questions of

product. And, by and large, traditional discussions of

marketing in business ethics have been devoted to

such ethical questions of product.

Certainly aU of these same questions of product in

regards to the ethics of marking can be applied to

many of the marketing practices that one finds on

the Internet. Indeed, if, for instance, one actuaUy reads the typical spam she receives on a daily basis, she wiU find no shortage of paradigm cases for such

discussions. Advertisements for putative cures for

baldness, impotence, obesity, and other ailments, real or imagined, vie in a dizzying array with offers

for credit, business opportunities, sexual material and

other goods and services of dubious worth. As such, I certainly do not deny that the traditional ethical

issues raised surrounding marketing and advertising retain their importance in the environment of e

commerce. Nonetheless, I want to argue that these

matters do not exhaust the general sense of concern

that is commonly raised in regards to the marketing

practices involved in e-commerce.

Before moving directly to this question, let me

briefly review three of the practices of Internet

marketing that I have in mind first. My choice of

these three should not suggest that I take them to be



Ethical Significance of Internet Marketing 273

either exhaustive of, or even necessarily the most

important of, the sorts of techniques that are in

volved in e-commerce. They simply are some of the

more common ones with which most Internet users

are familiar, and each of them is also iUustrative of

the deeper issues that I think Internet technologies used in e-commerce raise.

First, there is spam, those ubiquitous messages that

fiU our inboxes in a seemingly never ending stream.

While it turns out that defining spam is more diffi

cult than it might appear at first glance, for the

purposes of this discussion it is enough to stipulate that spamming in the context of marketing involves

the sending of unsohcited e-mail advertisements,

usuaUy repeatedly, to very large lists of e-mail ad

dresses. Often, though arguably not necessarily,

spamming campaigns involve an additiond feature:

the source of the e-mail is difficult to trace and the

consumer is not able to remove themselves from the

e-mail lists used to generate the spam. Indeed, often

the attempt by a consumer to opt out of receiving further e-mail is used by the sender as a way of

confirming the legitimacy of the consumer's com

puter address and results in the person receiving more spam in the future, not less (Hafner, 2003).

Wh?e estimates vary, at least 2 trillion spam mes

sages are sent to American e-mail addresses on a

yearly basis and the amount of spam sent has in

creased by double digits on a yearly basis over the last

few years (Swartz, 2003). For some time now, spam

messages have been far more prevalent for most users

on their e-mail accounts than legitimate e-mail

messages, despite the significant efforts of Internet

service providers to block such messages (Hafner,

2003). While spamming involves sending unsolicited

messages to e-mail users, the use of pop-ups can be

thought of as a different kind of unsolicited adver

tising. Pop-ups are separate windows that automat

icaUy appear on a user's browser when he or she

accesses a web site. The most common use of pop

ups is to advertise some product or service to the

person viewing a web site, and often they provide

hyper-Hnks for the consumer that w?l lead them to

further windows if pursued. As technology advances,

pop-ups have become more sophisticated, with

some including video images and/or audio tracks.

Other pop-ups wiU move about a person's browser

screen rather than occupy a stationary position.

While most pop-up windows are easy to close, it is

somewhat more difficult on others to find the close

function. At the worst extreme, there are those

nefarious pop-ups that in essence take control of the

normal functions on one's browser, so that the at

tempt to close them or use the back function on

one's browser screen instead takes the viewer to

new, and usuaUy undesired, windows, so that the

user becomes "locked" into viewing a series of new

windows from which there is no obvious escape

(Newman, 2001). At times, the only way to get out

of the loop started by attempting to close these kinds

of pop-ups is to shut the computer being used down

altogether.

Cookies are smaU files placed on a user's com

puter by a third party entity when that person is

browsing web sites on the Internet. Such cookies

record various information about the user that is later

retrieved by the computer that placed them on the

user's site. While there are lots of uses for cookies

and a number of types of information that they can

be used to retrieve, they are commonly used in e

commerce to store database information, customize

page settings, or otherwise make a site unique to a

specific user. Doing so gives companies, in the

words of one Internet business site, "the ability to

personalize information (like on My Yahoo or Ex

cite), or to help with on-line sales/services (like on

Amazon Books or Microsoft), or simply for the

purposes of tracking popular links or demographics

(like DoubleCUck) (Tenrox, 2003)". Cookies are

also sometimes placed by third parties to coUect

information about a users' preferences or

browsing

habits. This information, in turn, can be distributed

widely and easily on the Internet to other companies who can in turn use it to market other goods and

services to these consumers (Stead and Gilbert,

2001). The basic principle behind the use of cookies

involves the ability of businesses (or other entities) to

place files or programs on consumers' computers to

coUect data about those consumers in ways that are

often opaque to the user and/or difficult for them to

control. This same principle has led to a number of

other Internet technologies used by businesses that

have caused even more concern on the part of

consumers. In this regard, Colin Bennett (2001) even notes that "cookie technology might be the

tracking device of the past (p. 202)". Web Bugs, for




instance, are very small graphics embedded in Web

pages or e-mails designed to monitor and collect

information on who is reading the pages or e-mail in

question. Again, these bugs allow companies to

compile information about consumer behavior on

line and are often placed on web sites by third parties

(Bennett, 2001). In the same regard, many of the

techniques involved in such practices as data mining on the Internet involve similar uses of technology to

monitor and gather data concerning consumer

behavior in ways that consumers are either unaware

of or unable to avoid when they engage in Internet

use (Tavani, 2000).

Having briefly viewed the nature of some of the

marketing practices that have elicited concern from

Internet users, we can now see that by and large the

ethical issues surrounding these practices cannot be

readily viewed in terms of the common ethical

topics that discussions of marketing ethics have fo

cused upon in the past. For instance, for many of us

who rarely do more than glance at the spam e-mail

that we receive, our primary concern is not simply that the appeals contained in such messages are

deceptive in nature (though surely many of them

are), or that the products or services they advertise

are worthless or harmful (though, again, surely a

large majority of them are). Similar remarks could be

made about the use of pop-ups. In the case of

cookies and related information gathering technol

ogies this point can perhaps be made even more

clearly, since here we are often unaware of the very

existence of the practice involved and thus of the

companies and kinds of marketing connected with

them. In each case then, our sense of concern with

these practices is not derived primarily from ethical

questions of product, but from elsewhere, even if we

cannot always articulate the nature of the source of

this ethical concern. But many people do at least

sense that there might be ethical problems associated

with many of these practices, even if they cannot

quite put their finger on what the issues really are.

Any attempt to deal with the ethical issues raised by e-commerce thus must involve more than a

simple

apphcation of the questions of product to the con

text of the Internet. Rather, if we are to fully

exphcate the ethical issues surrounding e-commerce,

we must attempt to unpack the source and signifi cance of this underlying sense of worry about the

implications of the kinds of business practices it often

involves. In the foUowing sections, I wiU attempt to

do just this, displaying what I beUeve is the philo

sophical source of our concern with the practices involved in e-commerce and disclosing more clearly the deeper ethical questions engendered by the

technologies of e-commerce.

Questions of technique and the transformation

of the world of commerce

So far I have argued that if the practices of e-com

merce marketing raise ethical questions for our

consideration, then these ethical issues must take us

beyond those discussed in the context of marketing in the past. While not denying that e-commerce

does involve those issues, what I have termed ethical

questions of product, I have also suggested that our

real sense of unease with some of the practices in

volved in e-commerce marketing raise consider

ations of a different sort. Again, if the problem with

spam advertising was merely that the information it

contained was deceptive or that the products and

services advertised non-beneficial, then the outcry over spam would hardly be as widespread as it is for

the simple reason that most of us pay very Uttle

attention to the information contained in spam advertisements anyway. Likewise, if the use of

pop-ups and cookies in marketing products are

moraUy problematic, it can hardly be because of the

nature of the products they advertise or the infor

mation about the products they provide, since the

techniques involved are neutral as regards to such

issues. So, if these practices pose a particular prob lem, it must be one that moves us beyond questions of product. Our inquiry needs as such to change to

reflect the nature of the practices involved in e

commerce themselves.

To properly orient our philosophical focus, we

should first consider that if the ethical questions in

volved in these practices do not primarily turn upon the nature of the products or even the message

conveyed about the products, then the obvious re

sponse is that they involve the means by which the

consumer is accessed in e-commerce. And, this I

would maintain, is exactly right. Our real concern

with such practices is not with the products in

volved, or even what is claimed about the products, but with the innovative means by which businesses




can relate to potentid

consumers. Others have made

similar claims (see, for instance, Radin, 2001). But

why should this pose a problem, and what exactly is

the nature of the problem? The answer to these

questions is less obvious and has not, to my mind, been fuUy explored. Here, I wiU proceed by arguing for two inter-related claims. The first is that we

should think of the ethicd issues posed by e-com

merce primarily in relation to what I wiU term the

questions of technique that they raise. The second is

that questions of technique are particularly important to address because they deal with transformations in

both the kinds of relationships that we have with

others as weU as with the concepts that are used in

determining the ethical norms governing these

relationships. The first point is the easier one to see. What I w?l

caU questions of technique in business ethics turn on

questions involving the means by which a business

interacts with its consumers or potential consumers

rather than on the nature of the product or service

itself or the message put out about that product.

They involve questions, for instance, about how a

business can access consumers for the purposes of

marketing or seUing a product in the first place. And, I think it is clear that the underlying sense of unease

that is found in many discussions of e-commerce

clearly relate to such questions. What has changed

radically with the advent and growth of e-commerce

is not, at least not primarily, the type of products involved or the types of claims that are made about

these products. This is again not to say that problems with these sorts of issues are not present in e-com

merce, it is just to say that they are present in e

commerce largely to the same extent that that they were present in marketing in the past. Rather, what

has rapidly changed is the way in which the Internet

aUows businesses to interact with consumers. And

this, I would argue, is proving to be the red chal

lenge to our understanding of the ethics of Internet

marketing. With each of the practices involved in

e-commerce discussed here, as with a host of others, what we are finding is that businesses now have

fundamentaUy new ways of interacting with

consumers that raise serious and largely new ques tions for our understanding of business ethics. The

most significant ethical questions that can be raised

about e-commerce involve questions surrounding

the very techniques by which businesses can now

interact with consumers and questions as to how

these techniques are transforming the nature of the

relationship between consumers and marketers.

Answering these questions, I wiU argue, means

examining the applicabiUty of many of the concepts we have used in the past to discuss legal and moral

issues about the relationship between businesses and

the public to the world of e-commerce.

Again, in some sense this is readily obvious.

Spamming aUows companies to access large numbers

of consumers easily and inexpensively. The use of

pop-ups aUows companies to direct messages to

consumers in very unexpected, at least from the

consumer's point of view, and selected ways. Like

wise, cookies, web bugs, and other data-mining

technologies aUow companies to gather information

on consumers and track consumer behavior in order

to market products to consumers in highly targeted manners. In each case, Internet technologies aUow

businesses to interact with consumers in ways that

were not possible in the past. Ethical questions sur

rounding the use of such innovative technologies to

establish connections with consumers is what I am

terming ethical questions of technique. The issue I

wiU next turn to is what questions of technique in

volve and why I believe they are so important. I would first note that ethical questions of tech

nique are not completely new, nor have they gone

completely unnoticed by ethicists (see for instance,

Thompson, 1997). The development of a national

postal system gave birth to the use of mass marketing and direct mailing. The invention of the telephone

eventuaUy led to the use of the unsolicited sales caU

by marketers. And, television advertising aUowed

businesses to enter the home of the average con

sumer in a significant way for the first time. Each of

these technologies led to changes in the means by which businesses could interact with consumers, and

each resulted in at least some reflection as to the

ethics involving the use of these techniques (Radin,

2001). Nonetheless, I would argue that the devel

opment of the Internet and the technologies of e

commerce have made questions of technique more

pressing then ever.

My general thesis then is that business relation

ships, like any sort of relationships, are estabhshed on

the basis of the means by which the persons involved

interact. And, as technology changes the means by which persons interact, there wiU be ramifications




upon the nature of relationships that are possible, as

weU as upon our understanding of the norms and

concepts that govern such relationships. My more

specific point is that just such a change is being

signaled with the emerge of the technologies of

e-commerce, and that such a change is altering the

basic nature of the relationship that exists between

consumers and businesses. Further, such a change is

affecting the way in which we have previously understood the ethical Umits and norms governing these relationships in a fundamental manner. In the

next section, I will more fuUy flesh out these claims

as weU as illuminate the source of this transformation

and its normative implications.

Philosophical and ethical quandaries: The new

world of business on the internet

My contention is that the technologies of e-com

merce are fundamentaUy altering the kind of rela

tionships that businesses can and do have with

consumers, and with this transformation the appli

cability of our previous understanding of the norms

and concepts governing these relationships. To flesh

out this claim, we should note that many persons have quite rightly seen that many of the questions of

technique related to e-commerce turn on issues of

privacy and property as weU (see for instance,

Bennett, 2001; Maury and Kleiner, 2002; Radin,

2001; and Stead and Gilbert, 2001). However, what

has been less clearly seen is that the issue goes deeper than this. That is, any attempt to simply apply our

habitual notions of privacy and property to the

context of e-commerce is bound to be unsatisfying since the kinds of relationship from which our

understanding of these concepts was derived and to

which they are normaUy app?ed are themselves

being altered. What reaUy needs to be examined is

the very nature of the relationships that are made

possible by the technologies of the Internet and then,

and only then, wiU the full significance of the issues

engendered by e-commerce emerge.

To see this point, we should note that notions

such as those of privacy and property are inherently social in nature. These concepts would make Uttle

sense and be Uttle needed if we existed as completely isolated individuals, since they essentiaUy concern

the Umits that we place on the way in which others

can access ourselves and the fruits of our endeavors.

As social concepts, they are derived in relation to the

sorts of social relationships that are present within

given social structures. But social structures change, and with them so too do our concepts of such no

tions as privacy and property. Importantly, changes in technology allow persons to have access to others

in ways that were hitherto not possible, and thus

change the sorts of relationships that are possible between individuals in a given set of social practices

(Winner, 1993). In this paper I am arguing that just such a set of transformations is being brought about

by the technologies available on the Internet.

Pop-ups, cookies, and spam in this regard are merely illustrative of a deeper set of technological transfor

mations that is fundamentally altering the sorts of

relationships that are possible between businesses and

consumers. The very fabric of the business world is

itself being altered by these technologies in ways that

are stressing

our previous understanding of the nat

ure and limits of the relationship between consumers

and businesses.

There is no doubt that notions of privacy and

property have been particularly important to the

Western legal and moral tradition in modern times

(May, 1980). These concepts have been shaped by a

certain notion of individuality central to the Western

understanding of the self (Taylor, 1989). This notion

of individuality, in turn, has been defined in refer

ence to the kinds of relationships that our social

practices have previously involved. Of course, one

of the important set of relationships involved has

been those found in commerce. And, this notion of

individuality has thus been at the heart of our

understanding of the ethical norms governing rela

tionships of commerce. The notion of individual

autonomy involved places great emphasis upon an

individual's ability to determine the way in which

other individuals interact with them (Buss, 2002). Until recently, this notion was largely defined in

terms of physical access to a person or to the physical control of the goods that she possessed, and thus so

too were the concepts of privacy and property that

governed relationships between persons, including those found in the world of business. This is not

surprising, since the physical separation between

persons and goods were the characteristic way in

which the separation of individuals was understood

in these relationships.




However, what we are finding is that notions of

privacy and property grounded in an understanding of relationships that are defined in terms of

physicality are not easily applicable to the context of

the Internet and to the technologies of e-commerce.

As I have shown, the technologies of e-commerce

are unique in that they are redefining the way in

which consumers can be accessed by businesses.

What is unique about these technologies is that they aUow companies to access consumers in ways that do

not involve the sorts of physical transactions that

have been seen as paradigmatic of definitions of

privacy and property in the past. The world of

cyberspace, in which businesses interact with con

sumers, is not a physical world, at least not in the

way that shops, offices, and maUs are, and the no

tions of privacy, property and related concepts do

not weU apply in this world. As Colin Bennet (2001)

argues, the Internet is creating a new form of life

with its own distinctive kinds of social interactions

and practices. The new kinds of relationships that

these technologies involve are defined primarily in

terms of access to information rather than in terms of

physical accessibility. Rather than merely apply our

old concepts of privacy and property to these con

texts, we need to confront the very conditions of the

relationships established in the world of e-commerce

themselves.

I would maintain that confronting the larger

question of the implication that these technologies have for the kinds of relationships that are possible between businesses and consumers in the world of

the Internet needs our attention for at least three

reasons. For one, the sorts of technological advances

that have occurred with the development of the

Internet and related computer technologies have

quite simply advanced at a speed that is unprece dented in history. As such we have, as a society, had

little time to absorb the significance of these changes for our lives. If the concepts that we use to deter

mine the ethical parameters of business are derived

from the type of relationships that are possible within

the social sphere, then it is important that we reflect

upon the changes that the technologies of e-com

merce are bringing to the relationship between

businesses and consumers. While such changes have

always been occurring, the rate of the transformation

is making our attempts to absorb the significance of

these changes particularly difficult. The adjustment

of the concepts governing the ethics of relationships in the past was easier in part because the progression of the transformation was gradual. However, in the

digital age, these transformations are taking place at a

speed that hinders our ability to absorb their impact

fully into our conceptual apparatus.

Second, the sorts of techniques that e-commerce

involve are largely difficult to avoid and/or invisible

to the average consumer, who either is unable to

control them while browsing on the Internet or is

even unaware of their very existence and the means

by which they operate. While the sorts of techniques used by marketers in the past were largely such that

the consumer had the ability to determine the extent

to which they would be subject to them, the new

techniques used on the Internet tend to make the

access easier to control from the point of view of

businesses and less easier to control from the point of

view of consumers. The world of e-commerce in a

sense is reversing the direction by which the terms of

access between consumers and marketers is dictated.

And, much of the unease that is expressed by the

general public with Internet interactions reflects this

sense of loss on the part of consumers.

Third, these techniques have allowed businesses

to largely shift the burden of cost, both in monetary and non-monetary terms, of such access unto the

consumer. It is not just that many of the marketing and advertising techniques are much cheaper then

traditional means of advertising, though they cer

tainly are. Rather, it is also that they have allowed

businesses to transfer a large part of the expenses involved onto other parties. For instance, the costs of

spamming, which are not trivial, are largely born by

parties other than those sending them, such as the

service providers who must process such e-mail

(Spinello, 1999). The environment of the Internet, in effect, allows businesses to engage in marketing

practices quite cheaply, but the real costs of this

ability are ultimately born by others. And it is not

merely the burden of monetary costs, many of these

techniques have also changed who bears the burden

of other costs in these relationships. These tech

niques have also shifted the burden of costs in terms

of the time, effort, and knowledge spent in estab

lishing and maintaining relationships with consumers

from the businesses involved-onto the consumers. In

effect, e-commerce techniques allow companies

to

very easily have access to consumers and consumer




information, while making it relatively difficulty for

consumers to prevent such access.

Each of the above points ?lustrate the importance of the shift in the very nature of the kind of rela

tionship that exists between consumers and busi

nesses in the world of e-commerce. Let me end with

some reflections on the philosophicd significance of

this shift and some suggestions as to where a philo

sophicaUy sensitive understanding of the ethicd

implications of the technologies of e-commerce

should lead us. As I have argued, an essentid element

of the Western notion of individudity has concerned

an emphasis upon our abiHty to limit the access that

others have to ourselves. Limiting such access has

been seen as crucial to our ability to determine our

own Uves free from undue influence from others.

What the world of e-cornrnerce, and the world of

the Internet more generaUy, is transforming is the

ways in which others can have access to our lives, by means that no longer rely upon physical interven

tions and are largely opaque to us. In the past, at least

in the context of a capitdist understanding of the

market, it was largely assumed that individuals had

the abiHty to control the access that others had to

them through assuring them control over their

physicd self and possessions. Since physical viola

tions of space or control are fairly transparent, the

proper Hmits between individuals were fairly weU

demarcated and the ethical norms governing rela

tionships were derived from these distinctions.

In the world of e-commerce, it would seem that

the sorts of relationships that are possible give busi

nesses the dmost constant ab?ity to have access to

consumers in various ways, and to shift the cost of

that access back onto the pubHc itself. But the access

involved defies the appHcation of traditional con

cepts governing the limits of access since it does not

involve the sorts of physicd contacts that were

previously seen as paradigmatic of social relation

ships. What is now needed is to determine what

concepts are going to govern the limits of these

transformed relationships. I would argue that though the benefits of these new relationships are manifold,

they must be bdanced by a need to preserve at least

part of the centrd notion of individudity which has

been at the heart of our understanding of autonomy.

And, this means that we must find new ways of

governing the sorts of accesses that businesses have to consumers that preserves at least elements of con

sumers' ability to determine the Umits of this

accessibility. In the past, the norms and Umits that were placed

on relationships between persons were designed to

guarantee this control of access. However, those

norms were developed in a social context in which

the means of access were primarily physical ones, and

our concepts of privacy and property were largely

developed in relation to this context. In the world of

e-commerce this is what has changed. Access in the

world of digital computing is primarily a virtual

access, one that involves access to and control over

information about ourselves rather than control over

the physical boundaries between us.

As such, what is reaUy needed is way of assuring that individuals retain some degree of control over

the accessibility that others have to them. While it is

beyond the scope of this paper to go into specific details as to how this might be addressed, I would

suggest that at a minimum, this will involve two

important elements. One, there needs to be a greater

emphasis on transparency regarding the kinds of

transactions that are made possible within the rela

tionships between consumers and businesses on the

Internet. Since the sorts of connections that exist

between consumers and businesses in e-commerce

that we have discussed take place, as it were,

underneath the surface of the activities that con

sumers engage in on the Internet, it is often difficult

for them to understand that they are being estab

lished, how they are being carried out, or how to

control them. An emphasis on the need for trans

parency would stress that it is impossible for some

one to control how others are accessing them if they are not aware of the nature and purpose of that ac

cess. Ethical e-commerce practices should strive to

make any access of customers, whether through

e-mails, cookies, etc. as transparent as possible

to the

consumer, for only then can the consumer truly consent to the kind of interactions that occur be

tween themselves and the businesses involved.

Second, and stemming from the first point, public

regulation of the sorts of interactions that are aUowed

and the conditions of their use wiU be of paramount

importance. Whether through direct government action or through semi-governmental regulatory bodies, a greater degree of independent control needs to be provided to maintain the appropriate uses of Internet technologies in e-commerce. Because the




technologies of e-commerce are not readily trans

parent and because fuUy understanding their use is

often beyond the capability of the average consumer,

there is a greater need for third party oversight. While

consumers could be expected to easily monitor the

access that businesses had to them under models

based on physical interaction, they cannot be held to

do so in the world of e-commerce. Thus, there is

stronger need for public regulation to provide con

sumers with some assurance about the kind of access

that businesses have to them and to make the nature

of these relationships as transparent as possible to

consumers who might lack the ability to do so

themselves. The goal of such regulation should in

part be to put the burden of costs, again monetarily and non-monetarily, of accessibility to consumers

back onto businesses. Many businesses have them

selves sought stronger legal regulatory control over

the way in which consumers can access the products

they produce, as in the case of music downloading and related practices. IronicaUy perhaps, what con

sumers should demand is the same sort of regulatory control over the accessibility that businesses have to

information about themselves and over the use to

which it is put.

Conclusion

In this paper I have argued that the various practices that are

commonly involved in e-commerce raise

deep philosophical issues involving the manner in

which technology can transform the nature ofbusiness

relationships in ways that chaUenge some of the fun

damental concepts that have characterized these

relationships in the past. Raising such questions I have

argued moves us beyond the typical questions of

product that have dominated discussions of the ethics

of marketing in the past and into questions of tech

nique that involve the very means by which businesses

relate to consumers in the first place. Such questions are both much more important and much more dif

ficult to deal with because they reveal the way in

which technology can transform the basic structures of

the social sphere itself in such a way as to have deep ramifications for the application of many of the con

cepts normaUy appealed to in discussions concerning the ethical and legal norms governing business prac tices. In specific, I have tried to show that lurking

underneath the surface of the general public concern

with such now common e-commerce practices such

as spamming, pop-ups, and cookies lie a host of

philosophical and ethicd issues concerning the way in

which the technologies of the Internet are funda

mentaUy transforming the nature of the relationship that businesses have with consumers and the public. In

turn, I have tried to show that this transformation has

deep implications for our understanding of such fun

damental notions as privacy and property as weU as for

our understanding of how the costs, monetarily and

otherwise, of doing business are properly aUocated.

While I have offered some suggestions as to how we

might address some of the ethical implications of these

transformations, I have above all attempted to show

that it is important that we face up to the chaUenges

brought with these technologies in a more systematic fashion than has been done as of yet. If, as I have

argued, technologies bring with them the abiHty to

fundamentaUy dter the nature of the kind of rela

tionships that exist between businesses and consumers,

then it is particularly important that we address the

ethical implications of these changes before the

transformation is complete.

Notes

For a good, brief, survey of the early history and

development of the Internet, see Sterling (1993). The textbooks surveyed were

Beauchamp and Bowie

(2004), Donaldson and Werhane (1999), Hoffman, et al.

(2001) and Shaw and Barry (2001). This is not to say that these issues have not been raised

by others. Indeed, later in the paper I point out some

authors who have addressed what I am here calling

questions of technique to some extent. However, these

issues have been largely addressed in the context of more

general discussions of technology, not from the perspec

tive of viewing them as basic issues in marketing and

advertising ethics as I approach them here.

References

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Cue Cats: Patterns of Surveillance on the World Wide

Web', Ethics and Information Technology 3(3), 197-210.




Buss, S.: 2002, 'Personal Autonomy', inE. Zalta (ed.), The

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http: //plato. Stanford.

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Donaldson, T. and P. Werhane: 1999, Ethical Issues in

Business: A Philosophical Approach, 6th edition (Prentice HaU, Upper Saddle River, NJ).

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Shaw, W. and V. Barry: 2001, Moral Issues in Business, 8th

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SpineUo, R. A.: 1999, 'Ethical Reflections on the Problems

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Sterhng, B: 1993, 'Internet', The Magazine of Science Fic

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Taylor, C: 1989, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern

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Thompson, P.: 1997, Food Biotechnology in an Ethical

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Winner, L: 1993, 'Citizen Virtues in a Technological Order', in E. Winkler andj. Coombs (eds.), Applied Ethics: A Reader (Blackwell, Cambridge, MA), pp. 46-68.

Department of Philosophy, Kent State University, Trumbull Campus,

4314 Mahoning Ave., N.W.,

Warren, OH 44483, U.S.A.

E-mail: dpalmer 1 @kent. edu



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