I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. Neither am I a policy expert. I am a digital product expert, however, and have thoughts on the current state of attempts at governing digital products. Starting with: Problem #1: Current attempts don't actually govern digital
Products with intrinsic safety risks have been of concern to US citizens since the birth of the country. For this paper, alcohol, tobacco, food, medicine, automobiles and airplanes were examined, particularly their US product introduction, mass production, and product safety histories. Table 4 summarizes key milestones: (a) the earliest date
A couple weeks ago, Melanie Ensign and I had a hard look at the Product Safety Resistance Playbook. Melanie had two seismic insights: 1. It's not just a list of clever corporate stratagems, it's a list of ways that people who lead companies systematically reinforce an
The United States’ Attitude Towards Product Safety The US was one of the earliest movers to acknowledge consumer protection as a human right. On March 15, 1962, President John F. Kennedy announced the Consumer Bill of Rights to Congress affirming: (1) The right to safety: to be protected against the
One of the interesting data points from my research was that of the 193 UN member states, 64 have constitutions that include a provision for consumer protection, 49 don't, and 83 have no answer. https://unctad.org/topic/competition-and-consumer-protection/consumer-protection-map NOTE: I'
This will be the living bibliography for posts here. It's based on the references section of this paper but includes additional references. Berk, L.R. (2019). Alcohol, Temperance and Prohibition. [online] Brown.edu. Available at: https://library.brown.edu/cds/temperance/essay.html [Accessed 30 Jun. 2025]. Berris,
I harbor a hope–and a hypothesis–that the term "digital product" can be a harmonizing and unifying force for good across regulatory terms and can provide clarity in how to better regulate digital products. Here's an example: I recently came upon this definition in EU
So much product safety and liability thinking hinges on the acceptance of the idea of digital products. Here is my latest thinking on them. (this is a highly edited version of a section of this paper: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr-ryan/publications/product-safety-playbook-digital-age)
[Originally posted in LI.] I need a new phrase to capture the systemic digital product safety & security dysfunction naturally occurring in capitalistic economic systems. The Industry Product Safety Resistance Playbook shows the symptoms but not the disease. The disease is that these systems view anything that negatively impacts the
Melanie Ensign's concise testimony for the Vermont Privacy bill last week inspired some clean-up and clarity in the playbook. I accidentally removed "Deny harm" entirely when cleaning up standalone version 1.0. I've also removed the "Effects" column because I think
Similar to yesterday's post, this table was originally published in the Harvard fellowship paper. During my research, I found the book, "Handbook of Research on International Consumer Law", 2011, ed. Geraint Howells, Iain Ramsay, et al to be a wealth of information. Luke Nottage's
For the past few years I've been researching how product safety has evolved over time. Earlier this year, my preliminary work on a Digital Product Safety playbook was published. One of the most effective ways to hold industry accountable is to name the tactics used to avoid product