ABSTRACT
Introduction In the 1990s, the early days of the commercial internet, the term ‘disintermediation’ played a signifi cant part in academic discussions of the online world. The view was that the internet dispensed with the need for many of the traditional middlemen, allowing transactions and exchanges to occur directly between the primary actors. One commentator wrote, for example:
Similar views were expressed about many other traditional commercial and non-commercial institutions, such as the press, newsagents, book and music shops, television companies, video stores, security brokers, estate and travel agents, and many other bricks-and-mortar retailers. While some of these predictions have materialised – consider, for example, the dwindling number of music and bookshops, or the direct sale of fl ight tickets by airlines – the claim of disintermediation on the internet has still failed spectacularly. The online era has not only witnessed the replacement of many traditional intermediaries by online intermediaries (such as Virgin Megastores versus Apple iTunes), but also the emergence of new intermediaries that have no obvious bricks-and-mortar equivalent, such as search engines or networking sites. From a regulatory perspective, the continued existence of intermediaries in the online world is signifi cant, because intermediaries are an indispensable regulatory tool and target.
