An eBay court case poses a question that gets a lot more interesting the more you think about it: If an e-commerce site is used extensively by a large number of shoppers as their primary store, does it become subject to all of the laws that govern physical stores? The legal issue in this case involves a deaf seller who argued that accessibility laws required eBay and other e-tail sites to accommodate shoppers with vision and hearing difficulties.
The argument for the shopper speaks to the intent of the original legislation—or, more precisely, the intent of the legislators who crafted that initial legislation. Did they not indeed intend that if shoppers must go to public stores to make purchases, those stores must allow in and support all shoppers equally? The counter is that the law understandably makes no reference to e-commerce and that if Congress wants to pass such a law, great, but until it does, courts must assume that a law means what it says and nothing more.