In Satoshi's paper he suggests escrow services for the protection of buyers, but as far as what I've read of Clearcoin it seems Clearcoin is currently unfair to the buyer?
If it's unfair to anyone, which I don't think it is, it's unfair to the intended bitcoin recipient. The bitcoin sender can claim that they never received the item and withhold payment. What ClearCoin does is provide a disincentive for them to do so. They either have to wait a set amount of time before reclaiming their escrow payment, or it will be sent to a charity. If the recipient doesn't trust the sender at all, they can request the latter option, which provides the strongest incentive to honesty.