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.""

Comments

Re:This kind of thinking is necessary

[Big Dogs Cock]

S'right.

Unless they can force US ISPs to firewall off the rest of the world (how technically possible is that?), then the Russian Federation (and others) will happily supply all your ripped music, porn and video needs.

Folks want porn. Folks want CDs they can play in their PCs. Folks want to be able to listen to music they'll never hear on the radio before buying the CD - and when they do buy the music, they don't want to rent it for a month and they don't want to lose the lot next time their IBM drive goes tits up.

Hope I don't get modded up for that - it was obvious and I wanted this to be a trolling account.

Shipping Law...

[MosesJones]

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.

Re:Shipping Law...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's because of the lack of control one has over the route of the "goods". this will change. i predict that within 2 years, routers will have to be geographically aware.

Re:DO SOMETHING FUCKNUT!

[Flower]

If constitutional law can't resolve this then we are fubared because it is obvious that as a societal entity "Americans" don't give a rip about these issues. For now, I'll stick with the DMCA and skip the USA act.

Big media has a coherent, easy to digest mantra that they have unified behind. The Internet without controls threatens our business and we need legal backing to protect our investments (aka property.) It is a compelling interest that the courts and government have bought into.

We, as geeks/IT professionals/what-have-you, can't even agree to whether code is speech. We have no mantra and our arguments are not easily digestable for the masses. I have yet to find one co-worker/family member/man on the street who gave a damn that DVDs can't be viewed under linux, that Dmitry was arrested, or that computer security researchers feel that they have to think twice before publishing.

These issues are too remote for 99% of the public to care about. And just as the courts decided in the Felton case and as can be read in the copyright office's report, most people don't see these concerns as being ripe. In the age of Napster where infringement is so common that music on the Internet has no worth what argument can you craft that can be heard over that of Big Media? When the RIAA can point to kids hording gigs of MP3s that no one, including the artist, has seen a dime on and then further point out that they are "sharing" these files what hypothetical is going to convince your congress-critter that something like the DMCA is a bad thing?

Please be aware that I am in full agreement that for those who care about these issues we need to be politically active. But I look at these issues and sorry to say I don't see the next civil rights movement here.