internet commerce

For the past decade, a few clever companies have been running an online scheme that tricked consumers into joining so-called membership clubs and charged their credit cards without their consent. But thanks to Sen. John Rockefeller, the era of this $1.4 billion con is coming to an end.

I'm an Amazon (AMZN) shopper (my Kindle 2 is supposed to arrive today!), but I was still surprised to read that the company could be responsible for one out of every three online purchases. Barron's quotes RBC Capital analyst Stephen Ju as estimating that Amazon's direct sales and the value of...