If legislation pending before the House Energy and Commerce Committee is passed and signed into law, online merchants will be severely restricted in their ability to use "big data" and behavioral advertising to help set prices, discounts or coupons for customers. Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your position on the legislation) this being the current Congress, it is unlikely that anything will actually happen. Nevertheless, this reflects the growing unease about the concept that you and I will be charged different amounts for the same product or service based upon the data collected about us, pens Legal Columnist Mark Rasch.
Recently, Rep. Susan Davis (D. Cal.) introduced H.R. 2487: the Ensuring Shoppers Honest Online Pricing Act of 2013." In the world of cutesy acronyms, this is the E-SHOP Act. The law would require the Federal Trade Commission to promulgate rules and regulations "requiring an Internet merchant [with a total annual gross revenue of more than $1,000,000 indexed for inflation] to disclose to each consumer, prior to the final purchase of any good or service, the use of personal information in establishing or changing a price." This would not include additional costs associated with taxes or shipping based on the consumers’ address.
