Ethical, Legal, and Regulatory Issues

Ethical, Legal, and Regulatory Issues

First, how ethical issues differ on a B2C site compared to a B2B site? B2C and B2B sites generally deal with different ethical issues. Consumer privacy is an important concern for B2C sites. For example keeping e-mail addresses secret and hiding from third parties to avoid unsolicited emails and spam is considered as an ethical responsibility for B2C sites. Cookies are small data items that contain information about us and our computer including IP addresses. Websites may use first party cookies to recognize their old customers. They contain information that is encrypted so others can't read the content. This helps to insure our privacy. However there are also third party cookies which allow this information to be read by another website. B2C websites should avoid using third party cookies to protect their customers' privacy.

On the other hand B2B customers tend to care less about privacy except special circumstances because they generally use corporate identities during memberships or transactions. B2C customers are generally unaware of intellectual copyrights when compared to B2B customers. B2B customers mostly avoid these violations as a part of business ethics and know the common courtesy that should be used for polite interaction over the Internet. Here is another example: When are electronic documents admissible evidence in a court of law? What do you do if they are not? Time and place can carry different dates for buyers and sellers when they are countries apart. For example, an electronic document signed in France on December 10 th may have the date December 9th in Puerto Rico., which date is legal?

The use of multiple networks and trading partners makes the documentation of responsibility difficult.

Second, how legal issues differ on a B2C site compared to a B2B site?

Most of the ethical aspects we mentioned in the first question are also related with the legal duties of the websites. Also, these issues can also turn into legal issues as well. In cases of fraud, it is usually easier on a B2B site to prove because they deal with actual companies, and most times do not have as many customers or transactions as those using a B2C site (Wiki, 2004). B2C sites find it very difficult to sue consumers when they violate laws, because with so many customers and transactions, it is almost impossible to sue all of them. Protection against fraud is an important issue for both B2C and B2B sites, but because B2C has to deal with so many more transactions than B2B it will always have difficulty dealing with those types of problems. B2B sites can sue their customers more easily than B2C sites especially when they are dealing a few customers with high transaction capacities.

It is generally very difficult for B2C sites to sue their customers when they violate laws because there are generally thousands