Legal Question in Technology Law in Wisconsin

Easily changing prices on poorly designed ecommerce sites - illegal?
A couple weeks ago, I read an article on Yahoo about how many ecommerce sites allow the customer to set his own price, by mearly editing the HTML code that is submitted to the server. The article does have some errors, but it can be located here: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010305/tc/tag_-_you_re_hit_1.html

Basically, one just looks at the HTML source of a product page (by going to ''View Source,'' for example) and looks through the code for a variable named ''price'' or something to that effect. By changing the value of this variable, and then submitting the new page to the server, the customer has just set his own price for a product.

From my perspective, I see that if the server readily accepts this new price, and the company does not manually look over the order and cancel it, that it is the fault of the company for not being more careful, and the customer has been unethical, but has done nothing illegal.

Can someone give me more insight into how the law deals with situations like this, and if there is any basis to sue a customer who sets his price in this manner?

Asked on 3/16/01, 4:53 pm

JAY Nixon nixon law offices

0 users found helpful

0 attorneys agreed

Re: Easily changing prices on poorly designed ecommerce sites - illegal?

Sounds like wire fraud/hacking to me, in violation

of at least a dozen state and federal laws.

You might consider bouncing it off your local

FBI office before proceeding. They might

also be able to answer your question on

their web site. Might you win in some

circumstances in front of a Jury? Sure,

but do you want to go through all that and risk

serious prison time in order to find out?

Answered on 5/25/01, 4:25 pm

Keywords

Match Any Match All

Country

State

Area of Law