No Cop on the Beat: Underenforcement in E-Commerce and Cybercrime

INTRODUCTION................................................................................... 107 I. REASONS FOR UNDERENFORCEMENT IN E-COMMERCE AND CYBERCRIME.................................................................... 109 A. Defining Underenforcement .................................................. 109 B. The Information Problem: “No Cop on the Beat” .................... 110 C. The Commons Problem: “It’s Not My Problem”...................... 113 D. The Forensic Problem, Both Legal and Technical ................... 115 II. ANSWERING POSSIBLE CRITIQUES......................................... 117 A. “The Internet Hasn’t Really Changed Anything”.................... 117 B. “Enforcement Works Better on the Internet” ........................... 118 C. “We Don’t Want Enforcement”.............................................. 120 D. “States Need to Be Laboratories of Experimentation”.............. 122 E. “The Feds Don’t Do Small Potatoes”...................................... 123 CONCLUSION....................................................................................... 124