IGC Commissions E-Commerce Survey

Published: Friday, July 29, 2005 Online-Casinos.com

IGC COMMISSIONS E-COMMERCE SURVEY

And strengthens Code of Conduct

The Interactive Gaming Council this week seemed to be taking a wide interest in e-commerce matters generally by appealing to all members of the public who may have carried out any kind of financial transaction over the internet to participate in an online survey.

Prepared by Rohan Miller, a professor at the University of Sydney (Australia) School of Business, the survey seeks to draw significant conclusions about the confidence that consumers have, or the lack thereof, in e-commerce sites.

Described as a 5 to 15 minute undertaking, would be participants are asked to click through to http://asr3.com/sm/login.asp?anom=112x1x1. No individual participants will be identifiable, and the results will be published in the academic literature. Approved by the ethics committee of the University of Sydney, the survey went live on 11 July 2005 and will continue for a month.

The IGC has underwritten the cost of the survey with money from one of its members.

One series of questions in the survey deals with disputes between e-commerce sites and consumers. Respondents are asked, for example, to rate the importance of third-party dispute resolution. This is a crucial issue, Dr. Miller said, because Internet consumers often do not have ready nor affordable access to the legal system that protects them from much of the risk involved in traditional, real-world transactions.

IGC executive director Rick Smith said the survey results could assist in establishing a best practice for the resolution of player disputes. He and Miller said the knowledge gleaned from the survey could help any e-commerce business reduce the perceptions of risk entailed in conducting transactions at its site.

The IGC has also been strengthening its Code of Conduct, which all members are obligated to follow. At its meeting last month, the IGC board approved the first revisions to the code in five years.

The new code states that, to ensure fairness, operators of online games should have each game's performance "...analysed by an independent, qualified person on a regular basis."

It requires members to implement anti-money laundering procedures, and directs them to use age and identity verification services as part of their efforts to prevent access to their sites by minors. The code also states that members agree to the IGC performing checks on their compliance with the code..