According to the Association for Competitive Technology, proposed
privacy laws in the US would, if passed in their present form, cost
domestic businesses that use the internet between $9 billion and
$36 billion.
According to the Association for Competitive Technology, proposed
privacy laws in the US would, if passed in their present form, cost
domestic businesses that use the internet between $9 billion and
$36 billion. The estimate is based on the costs of necessary
modifications to US web sites under the laws.
The Association, a national education and advocacy group for the
technology industry, claims that further regulation of on-line
privacy is premature. Its report concludes that there are no known
quantifiable benefits to such regulation and that “the market
continues to respond to consumer concerns about on-line
privacy.”
The study was authored by Robert Hahn, Director of the
AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies and Research
Associate at Harvard University. The Association for Competitive
Technology supported his research effort.
A summary of the study states:
“Based on 17 estimates from firms in ten
states and using multiple technologies, the study assumes $100,000
as the average cost to make web sites compliant with access
provisions and to create tracking databases in order to prove
compliance when threatened with private lawsuits or government
enforcement actions.”
The proposed privacy laws referred to are the Consumer Privacy
Protection Act, the Consumer Internet Privacy Enhancement Act, the
Consumer Online Privacy and Disclosure Act and the Spyware Control
and Privacy Protection Act.
