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!!
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.
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
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?
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/
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
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.
1) the mainstream press is owned by the same people writing copyright law; 2) copyright law is about as exciting as, well, law; and 3) people don't care about things that don't affect them. See how quickly people are willing to limit freedoms specified in the bill of rights, why would they even hesitate to limit freedoms not mentioned specifically?
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?
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
There are quite a number of things which have plenty of coverage on the net, but virtually none in the "mainstream press". The "mainstream press" is effectivly the mouthpiece of the "establishment", thus there is a wish not to rock the boat. Further the people who actually own newspapers, radio & TV stations, etc have been quite active in lobbying for changes in IP laws...
That's an especially interesting question in Canada [sooke.bc.ca] 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.
Also the mainstream media probably wasn't paying much attention in the first place.
Whilst 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."
Plenty of one sided coverage of bombing Afganistan. Calling it a "war" is stretching things rather. But one thing you havn't seen much of is any kind of asking "why?" in ernest. Probably because questions like "Why should people hate the USA?" and "What were they doing at NORAD that morning?" lead to the kind of answers which most of the US population don't want to face.
Let alone that restrictions on sending encrypted emails wouldn't have done much to stop any one planning a terrorist attack. Terrorists regardless of if they work for the CIA, Mossad, Al Queda, The IRA, The Mafia or whoever not only have lots of possible ways to communicate covertly. The only way they can be defeated is through either infiltration or defection.
Simply amassing data from communication intercepts is rather useless. Catching terrorists this way requires the sort of luck you need to win several lottery jackpots in a row. Without someone on the inside how can you tell what is planning and what is deliberate misinforation?