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Posted on 9/24/2008, 6:16:37 PM by HaplessToad
If the National Retail Federation (NRF) has its way, selling goods online will soon become far less anonymous and significantly more onerous for any online auction or discount website. The NRF has announced its support and testified in favor of three bills: H.R. 6713, known as the E-fencing Enforcement Act; H.R. 6491, aka Organized Retail Crime Act of 2008; and S.3434, the "Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2008." As the titles suggest, all of these bills are (supposedly) aimed at fighting organized crime rings, but don't worry—the burdens the NRF would impose upon you are for your own good. No, really—they actually say so.
According to the NRF's Vice President for Loss Prevention, Joseph LaRocca, the Internet is creating a new, dangerous type of retail thief. "Thieves often tell the same disturbing story: they begin legitimately selling product on eBay and then become hooked by its addictive qualities, the anonymity it provides and the ease with which they gain exposure to millions of customers," LaRocca said. "When they run out of legitimate merchandise, they begin to steal intermittently, many times for the first time in their life, so they can continue selling online. The thefts then begin to spiral out of control and before they know it they quit their jobs, are recruiting accomplices and are crossing states lines to steal, all so they can support and perpetuate their online selling habit."
Selling on eBay: it's worse than a heroin addiction.
Ostensibly, the purpose of these bills is to attack the growing prevalence of Organized Retail Crime (ORC), and no one involved in the discussion claims it isn't a problem. The theft rings referred to in all three bills are far more sophisticated and determined than your average shoplifter, and when they steal, they steal in bulk. The largest networks operate over multiple state lines in territories that span hundreds of miles. The goal of these enterprises is ultimately to redistribute the goods, whether that means selling off the back of a truck or running a major warehouse. Said warehouse's customers, in fact, may be perfectly legitimate businesses themselves, with no idea that the Huggies they're buying to stock on the shelf actually came out of a Wal-Mart two weeks earlier.
Not only are these businesses profitable, they're also considerably safer than drug running or dealing in other illegal substances, and if caught, the punishment under current federal statutes is much lighter. The estimated monetary losses to retailers are serious business, even for the mega corporations; one bill cites the losses due to these operations at $30 billion.
Retailers have a compelling interest in reducing the incidents of such theft, and the NRF has backed the aforementioned bills as one means of cracking down on ORCs, or so the organization claims. Details on each of the bills are presented below:
Upon the request of an appropriate party (retailer), the online marketplace must attempt to determine, without undue expense, whether the goods or items in question were lawfully acquired. If the items in question were illegally purchased, or if there's good reason to suspect they are, the provider is required to remove the auctions and ban the seller. Failure to comply with the statute is specifically stated as reason enough to seek relief.
Want more? Good. If you're an HVS, the website you do business on is required to maintain a three-year log of all of your transactions, and, your name, telephone number, and legitimate address must be posted in conjunction with any product you intend to sell. High-volume sellers are also required to provide this information "upon request of any business that has a reasonable suspicion that goods or services at the site were acquired through organized retail crime, its name, telephone number, and legitimate physical address." The rest of the bill concerns itself with statute changes and clarifications intended to punish organized retail crime more harshly than is currently permitted under law.
Furthermore, S. 3434 allows a retailer who suspects goods are being fenced illegally online to presume the guilt of the seller in question. The retailer (online or off, in this case), may request that the user "present documentary evidence that the operator (reseller) reasonably determines to be clear and convincing showing that the transient vendor or user has not used the retail marketplace to sell or distribute items that were stolen."
The central problem here is that the NRF would place the massive job of policing entirely upon the shoulders of the online resellers. In the past, companies have cited corporate policies that promote trust between employee and employer, but all three of these proposals ask online companies to gather and maintain extensive databases on their most loyal users, simply because those users might be involved in something illegal. The bills in question make no allowances for product type—whether you're selling hand-painted ornaments or Gillette razor blades, if you sell over $12,000 a year of anything, you're on the watch list.
Even more troubling is the fact that passing these proposals would give retailers the right to order an investigation of an individual based on nothing more than a suspicion. None of the bills we've discussed today offer retailers or customers any right to challenge the allegations; S.3434 explicitly forbids notifying a seller that they are, or have ever been, the target of an investigation.
Combine this with the retail industry's refusal to work with online giant eBay (as reported by Network World) because it would have required them to release information, and the proposals don't seem nearly so clear-cut. No one disagrees that organized theft is a problem, but blaming the issue on online merchants and eBay Power Sellers, and requiring that companies take aggressive actions to police and track customers in ways that the retailers themselves avoid, due to cost and negative publicity, is duplicitous in the extreme.
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What a bogus piece of crap...selling on ebay is an addiction and leads to criminal behavior? I have been a power seller for more than 8 years and haven’t done 1 creininal thing to date...LOL
Legal:” I have been a power seller for more than 8 years and haven’t done 1 creininal thing to date.”
I guess, according to this bill, you are a criminal if you’re a “power seller”.
I are not a creininal !
I don’t have any real objection to these measures, providing only that the full cost of implementing and complying with these measures is recoverable from the beneficiaries of same — namely the National Retail Federation.
Dear companies.
A large number of the people that are stealing from you....
Are YOUR employees.
Put more money into loss prevention and security and leave the internets alone.
Why not just shut down the internet and be done with it?
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