Slashdot Mirror
The Year in Internet Law
owenPS writes: "This New York Times article has "excerpts from e-mails written by six legal experts about the year's most important developments in law and technology...As in years past, the common element in the experts' responses seemed to be a sense that Internet law -- and cyberspace itself -- is still unfolding and that new battle lines are forming even as old conflicts are settled.""
From the Lawrence Lessig interview:
"The more I'm in this battle, the less I believe that constitutional law on its own can solve the problem. If Americans can't see the value of freedom without the help of lawyers, then we don't deserve freedom. We should be working to help Americans recognize freedom again."
I support the ACLU. Do you do ANYTHING?
The following is just a sig.
If you voted for Nader, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!
internet law went crazy this year and will be even worse in 2002 because of more and more big companies taking over and picking on smaller people
Things like sales tax, censorship, and criminal law take whole new meanings online and cannot be held to the old standard. Napster's distribution model disagreed with the old thinking, but proved that not everything can be applyed to those laws.
It's important to realize this before the internet ceases to be relatively free.
Adversive
My cat's breath smells like cat food.
1. Click the original link from the headline:
http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.n ytimes.com/2001/12/28/technology/28CYBERLAW.html
2. From that URL, replace the first "www" with either the word "archive" or the word "college".
That should let you view it without logging in.
Adversive
My cat's breath smells like cat food.
It seems curious that although Copyright and other forms of IP law seem to be such big issues in the electronic world, there is little discussion in the mainstream press of this rather important area of the law.
What always suprises me about "internet" law is that international shipping law is never mentioned with it. Take the following standard case
Shipping company is Danish lets say Maersk
Sony want to ship 100,000 units from its Corp HQ in Japan to its Inc in the US.
The ship is due to go via Hong Kong for loading onto a larger container ship, it will also go via the Panama canal.
In the carribean it is hit by a freak storm and the articles are damaged.
The contracts that Sony have with Maersk will have clearly defined countries in which the court cases will take place and for the most part this is defined by Maersk.
Why are the internet cases any different, the basic model is the same.
Of course it could just be lawyers generating money for themselves.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The Reson Internet law is getting so "BIG"... too many F***ing lawyers. Besides the Internet is it's own entity, "real world" law shouldn't really apply
Cass Sunstein
University of Chicago Law School
2. The growing belief that copyright law and the First Amendment are on a collision course. When some people's copyright protections mean that other people can't say what they want to say, there is going to be a constitutional issue. The issue has been neglected for decades. It isn't being neglected anymore.
The full brunt of this issue will come as a sharp slap to the face of everyone involved in this industry if Microsoft, Adobe and others are allowed to continue to get away with gag orders restricting or preventing the announcement of security holes.
It will make an interesting test case when one company sues another for, say, loss of data and it turns out that the defendant was prevented from making it known to the plantif that its IP was at risk because of a third company's restriction on the defendant's ability to act on a security flaw they knew about which would have saved the plantif's data.
Let's say that the defendant is hosting a credit-card brokerage's database. Let's say that the database is compromised and data is stolen at great cost to the brokerage. They'd be insured, sure, but might take action if they learned that the defendant was aware of security holes in the database. What happens when the defendant says that they were aware of the hole but were unable to patch because a patch hadn't be released and were unable to notify their client because of a gag order imposed by the lawyers of the company that produced the database?
Slashdot does a better job than most at warning readers that a linked-to site may require registration, or contain sensitive subject matter, etc.
However, you should realize, due to the nature of the internet, that there is no guarantee that the object you will find at this location[does not exist] will be anything like what it was when I gave you the reference by posting it here, or even that the site will let you access it at all.
In other words, yeah, registration sucks, but don't blame the messenger.
A new kind of meat designed to appeal to vegetarians.
none of these work
/ /w ww.n ytimes.com/2001/12/28/technology/28CYBERLAW.html
/ /w ww.n ytimes.com/2001/12/28/technology/28CYBERLAW.html
http://archive.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http:
http://college.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http:
Slashdot supporting sites (by linking to them) that dont value freedom is just as bad as slashdot promoting non-free software.
Do you consider yourself to be hypocrites ?
surely it should be "American Internet Law" not "Internet Law", in which case not a lot happened since DMCA and RIAA and the like means absolutly nada in the rest of the world, we can copy cd's dvd's whatever we like without dumb lawyers pointing fingers
Over the last couple of years my opinion of Lessig switched from being pretty favorable to considering him something of a blowhard. I would have had more respect for him if he had stayed out of the Microsoft case after getting bounced out by the Appeals court. Instead he goes back to support Jackson in a quasi-judicial role that should have required impartiality. The behavior of Jackson and to a lesser extent Lessig is the reason the case ended the way it did. What Microsoft did is essentially get the line umpire so mad at them that he made an obvious foul on them so the decision was bound to be overuled by the chief umpire.
It is easy to agree with someone who appears to be arguing the same case you are. Only I start to get the feeling that we are simply seeing our own prejudices getting reflected.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
The first response to this story was post number 2767032 posted at 6:51 in the reference timezone.
The post contains approximately 500 words, posted 3 minutes after the story was posted. If we neglect the time spent reading the story, the linked story, and all network delays, and presuming the post was not proofread, this still amounts to a raw typing speed of over 150 words per minute; impressive by any standard.
Clearly, this was a pre-written screed against Linux by some individual with more interest in destroying the Linux community than in building their own. It was clearly tied to an automated system to post this pre-written reply in response to any slashdot story meeting it's criteria.
It's a bit unusual, not at all unexpected, and clearly counterproductive to even their own objectives. I wonder where the author expects to be once the internet becomes nothing more than a battleground for competing perl scripts. After all, you can't market to a robot.
Then again, some people are just idiots.
A new kind of meat designed to appeal to vegetarians.
I do not think the author was unaware of the registration required, but it's possible. I would hope all slashdot posters are aware that registration is required for many stories at www.nytimes.com, but one of the features of the World Wide Web is that we see the web through the filtered lense of our own browser, which creates the risk that we will be blind to the way others will view a web object. It's possible that the author, as a registered user, has simply forgotten that not everyone is registered, in the same way that people who send MSWord documents through email often forget that not everyone is licensed to use MSWord (or even on a platform where MSWord is available), or web masters who only use (for example) IE are often unaware that the pages they create are unreadable by other browsers.
For an example closer to home, the "preview" function of slashdot for posting comments is seriously broke for anyone using the Lynx web browser. (Yes, the slashdot coders know about it)
On the other hand, unless you are owenPS, you cannot say that the URL was wrong. I'll accept that there may have been a better way to provide a link to the NYT article; but you must respect the author's choice for the story the author wrote. If you think you can do better, you are encouraged to do so. I'll michael appears to be the only one working today. ;-)
And while we all expect the NYT will continue to require registration for the forseeable future, they could change their policy at any time, and they are in no way required to notify slashdot of this change to their policy.
A new kind of meat designed to appeal to vegetarians.
When you cannot fight the growing restrictions being created by lobby backed politicians/law makers, then it's time draw the line between what is higher on the acceptability list and what is not in regards to abuses of these laws.
Such a line that is better than what the ACLU and EFF are capable of drawing with there high or potentially profile case selection. Yes we ALL know that is ultimately and inherently the basis of their case selections.
First thing is to recognize the question of "who likes lawyers?" and the whys behind the yeahs and nays. As a matter of understanding the limitations and abuses of lawyers.
In other words, a line on a list that says there is plenty to do in the upper half of the list, that you should not need to spend much time on the lower part of the list. Focusing on items on the lower part could and would indicate abuses of the laws. Not saying the laws are right or wrong, just that being productive and supportive of individual freedoms is how the list is created. Where those things listed higher on the list are more likely to be retrictive or counter of (going against):
**
The Constitution of the Universe (Internet included)
Preamble
The purpose of human life is to live happily.
The function of government is to guarantee those conditions that allow individuals to fulfill their purpose. Those conditions can be guaranteed through a constitution that forbids the use of initiatory force, fraud, or coercion by any person or group against any individual:
--
Article 1
No person, group of persons or government may initiate force, threat of force, or fraud against any individual's self or property.
Article 2
Force may be morally and legally used only in self-defense against those who violate Article 1.
Article 3
No exceptions shall exist for Articles 1 and 2.
--
This Constitution rests on six axioms:
-Values exist only relative to life.
-Whatever benefits a living organism is a value to that organism. Whatever harms a living organism is a disvalue to that organism.
-The basic value against which all values are measured is the conscious individual.
-Morals relate only to conscious individuals.
-Immoral actions arise from individuals choosing to harm others through force, fraud, deception, coercion -- or from individuals choosing to usurp, attack, or destroy values earned by others.
-Moral actions arise from individuals choosing to benefit others by competitively producing values for them.
***
As an Example of such a list there is Web Police and their Latest Web Statistics
Untill the internaional law and legal system can prove itself competent in actually dealing effectively with such a list, so as to level off or reduce the crime rate, it really doesn't need to be making up new laws, especially ones that may infringe upon the above constitution. As such, the resources being spent in creating new laws can be better spent in dealing what the longer established crimes that exist and are growing in number.
Also there is something to be said for preventitive measures, such as along the lines of preventitive healthcare and what could be as well consider resources for preventitive warfare, but here on the internet, creating the incentive to not be anti-constitutional (as in the above constitution). To do this by some means of removing the "consumer" and "producer" separation headings and replacing them with "participants" in a manner consistant with the above constitution and respectful of values injected into the internet by individual, groups and world participants.
No, the internet is totally international, but users, content providers, ISPs are all going to be subject to law somewhere. Sometimes this is fairly sound and sensible (e.g. paedophile rings which have been cracked by analysing their internet traffic patterns, but prosecuted on the basis of information stored on their disc drives). Sometimes it isn't (a UK ISP was fined for failing to cancel a Usenet posting which was deemed libelous - the court took the view that they were publishing Usenet rather than a carrier).
The internet may be international, like the sea, but the actors in the network, be they content providers, ISPs or users, are somewhere, and can be subject to law wherever they are. Your views on the law may influence where you decide to live.
If I spend $1,000 on proprietary software in the US, and import it across the wire, I'm still subject to paying UK import duty/VAT even though it's not coming through a port, and the retailer is still subject to sales tax wherever (s)he sold it. If I then make an illegal copy of that software and pass it to my friend, I'm still subject to action under UK law for breach of copyright.
Similarly, if I decode a DVD and make a copy of the content, then DMCA or no DMCA, it's still a copyright breach the same as if I copy a music CD onto a CD-R.
It seems as if the legal head-up-arse syndrome has come from an inability or unwillingness to tackle the subject of copyright infringement at the point where it happens, and instead to try to use law against the wrong targets. Remember, before CD-R the record companies were trying to get a levy introduced onto blank cassettes on the assumption that blank cassettes were only ever used for illegal copying - i.e. to levy for an unproven offence.
What's new isn't the need for law, or even the applicability of law, it's the newfound increase in difficulty of its enforcement. IMHO, there is a particular onus on lawmakers when they make law which forbids something which I can legitimately do today - I need a higher level of proof that such law is necessary and will be effective. Where such law is being introduced for my security then if the case is properly put I will consent to that loss if liberty (e.g. drink driving laws). Where such law is being introduced for someone's commercial benefit (e.g. the banning of reverse engineering or decoding) I don't find that the burden of proof has been met.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
When I submitted this story on the 28th, it was rejected. Today it's accepted. I love the consistency.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
I find it interesting that the first mention in the article is about the Patriot Act. This Act is a major attack on our rights. For more information on how it affects the FBI's use of Carnivore, please see The Patriot Act and Carnivore: Reasons for concern? an editorial I wrote for the SearchSecurity.com website.
Others have complained that this is a review of U.S. Internet law, not the world's; but on the other hand, U.S. Internet law has so much influence on everywhere else that the two are almost the same thing. If you're looking for information on other nations' Internet law, the story is mostly all about whether they will or will not follow the U.S. lead.
That's an especially interesting question in Canada right now, where the government started a consultation process asking citizens whether they wanted a DMCA, roughly 700 submissions were filed, and then 9-11 happened and most people stopped paying any attention. When my grandchilren ask me "Where were you when they took freedom away from the Net?", I don't want the answer to be, "Sitting on the couch watching the Afghan war coverage."
From the article:
/. archives comes up with this as the last article on the topic.
Barnesand Noble.com's victory over Amazon.com in an appeal of Amazon's claim that Barnes & Noble infringed on Amazon's one-click shopping patent, thereby bringing a ray of commonsense into the otherwise murky world of business-method patents.
When did that happen!? I dont recall seeing it on slashdot or any other news site. A quick search through the
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
This is a bit off-topic, but I'd just like to say doh! Does this happen often?
forma3
I submitted the same news item minutes after it hit NYTIMES site.
2001-12-29 06:44:40 Internet Law Review for 2001 (articles,news) (rejected)
24 hours later someone else posts it and it's accepted.
How does the approval queue for Slashdot work? I imagine it's multiple people looking at stories and then deciding to post them. Is that right?
Is there a guide to the whole submissions process?
hardly! You are a dumbass. What part of "You get what you pay for" don't you understand?
So what if one was rejected, and the other not? You still get to post in the article, don't you?
Gawd, does this have to come up on EVERY FUCKING NYTIMES STORY? Don't want to register? Read at yahoo or somewhere else. Sheesh.
I'm really sorry that you went through all that trouble writing that for me when I was just trolling. I registered for NYT a long time ago (I'm the parent's authour).
Actually, I take back my apology. What do I have to be sorry for? You're the moron here, not me.
Oh poor Dumbass, have you not been initiated in Slashdot ettiquite yet?
They are doing a service to the community by providing those links to us. They help us users who cannot register view the article.
Oh, who am I kidding? They're just karma whoring. Suckers.
-Rob
It's clear that a lot of people had considered the Internet to be somewhat immune to the possibility of regulation because of its lack of physicality and the great number of countries it serves - I've heard people say 'the net will never be regulated - to do it you would have to get every county in the world to agree upon, enact and then enforce an international multi-faceted agreement/legislation'
//insert jeers here - and I belong to a group of lawyers that spend a lot of time appealing proposed and existing legislation regarding the internet and it's collateral privacy issues. Unfortunately though, governments have huge scope to make provisions for national security, and so at the end of the day it all comes back to the people, because they are the only thing, en masse anyway, that can hold a government to task.
They would go on to say that we were therefore safe because all you would need would be to have one country refuse to enter into the agreement as one no doubt would)and it would be rendered useless - because everyone would then have their sites and content hosted in the abstaining country where there were no laws relation to Internet content etc - then unless you made it a crime to view such sites - who could stop you?
That's great in theory, but of course it doesn't take into account the willingness of countries to enact draconian legislation to regulate the activities of their own citizens in relation to the use of the Internet. You don't need world spanning legislation to regulate the Internet when a local law can address every aspect of the use of that medium. If it's illegal for me to submit a hack for a buggy OS, or a new set of algorithms to decode a DVD in my own country, what the heck do I care if someone in Bangladesh can do it with impunity - it still stops me from doing it - or at least makes it dangerous for me to try.
There is little limit to the laws a government can choose to enact, especially if it decides to employ such terms as 'National Security' in it's reasoning for the inception of laws. So there's not even any hope in the possibility of an international declaration that the Internet isn't the property of anyone (and therefore it is untra-vires for any country to attempt to make law for it) - because you don't need to make laws any further away from home to cripple the net as we know it.
I think the commentators have somewhat missed the boat when it comes to identifying the most important Internet Law development of the year, which is simply that at last the lumbering colossus of commerce and government has realised that it's going to wake up one day very soon and find their accepted ways of business have been replaced completely by functionality in the ether.
It's something that they have failed to grasp properly for years, and they intend to make up for that lack of foresight by enacting every possible law they can to regulate what they see as their worst enemy - free speech on a global basis. I include in my definition of 'free speech' the ability to write and propagate code, and disseminate information that is directly in conflict with that of others - including governments and big business.
We live in a capitalist world. That's the way it is, it isn't any other way - wish what you might. Commonsense dictates then that there must be laws to protect and aid trade - both locally and internationally. Most people agree to these laws without even thinking about them. But with law and the internet, these things have begun to take on an entirely different persona.
It could well be too late for the Internet, at least in it's current incarnation and at this point in time. The only thing that can really prevail against the rising tide of regulation and invasive legislation is a massive public outcry that goes to the roots of the governments in office. Unfortunately, I can't see that occurring. Sadly, most people are either unaware or have a lackadaisical attitude to the growing spectre of over-regulation and the peeling back of civil privacy rights.
It's been said before and does sound terribly uncomplicated (and thereforebound to draw derision) but since this is really the only way that big business and governments are going to be held in check, then I think a concerted effort needs to be made by those of us who give a damn. Make people aware of the problem, scare them, do whatever you think will communicate the message that one of the worlds greatest wonders could simply vanish under a varnish of business slogans and regulation - along with many of the rights they have taken for granted for so long.
I'm a lawyer
There's little point talking about the intricacies of certain pieces of legislation, we can argue legal technicalities till the cows come home, and do, but it's little better than a stalling tactic - that we're losing.
Take it up on a constitutional basis and when that fails, take it up on a popularity basis. Nothing else is going to work. People must learn that they do have power, they do have a voice, and they should exercise it before that right disappears in deference to fast food, a warm bed and the protection that only a prison warder can give.