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Legal Pundits Pan Internet Exceptionalism
Back in Brown writes: "This article from today's Wall St. Journal (via MSNBC) presents the viewpoints of several legal commentators that the Internet should be treated like any other invention and not subject to novel legal interpretations. 'The steam engine ... probably transformed American law, but the "law of the steam engine" never existed.' Another quote: 'cyberbuffs are afflicted with "insufficient perspective, disdain for history, unnecessary futurology and technophilia."'"
Like most Slashdot commenters, I have not read the article before writing this comment. However, I feel like posting a quick comment. It describes what I currently feel about the laws and Internet. It's not argumented. It's not great, but I hope it can sparkle interesting counter-comments. :)
:)
Internet doesn't need new laws. There are laws that punish the acts of thievery, of diffamation, of misinformation, of undecency, of conspiracy, etc. They are generally sufficiently abstract to apply efficiently to the Internet. The government and the judges might need to adapt the way they apply the law, but it's no the same as writing new laws.
Internet need new laws. It changes some fundamental aspects of our society. The copyright law is the first one that should be revamped. But it needs a nationwide debate, not a corporal sponsorship. Some assumptions about the act of publishing should be rethought, too. In the Internet age -- my, this sounds so pre-2k! -- everyone can be a publisher. Everyone should have the right to be.
Internet need labels. Everybody can have a role on the Internet that was previously only obtainable by professionals - retailer, publisher, advisor. Yet you can't expect everybody to fare equally well, and you shouldn't expect them to be equally liable. Labels should be instored, allowing someone to say "I am a good quality publisher. I accept that I am more liable than un unlabeled publisher. You can trust me more than un unlabeled publisher".
I'm sorry I can't write something more coherent; I'm so exhausted; I need to sleep.
But the first legislative response to the car was the passing of the red flag act in the UK which required a man to walk in front of a car with a red flag.
The attempts to legislate cyberspace in the US have mostly been as clueless. The CDA, COPA, DMCA, etc. etc. All pushed with the primary goal of making a congressman look cybersavy.
Where the article is wrong is that the technologists are not the ones calling for the laws. It is the army of self appointed experts who think everything is changing, Internet time, etc. etc.
The media thinks that the experts on the Internet are academics who write books on it not the people who write RFCs, architect standards etc. They think that everything is changing at the speed of light only because they have so little grasp of the technology.
It took us six years to get HTTP adopted as a standard. We are currently working on redoing RPC and CORBA in XML syntax. We are doing it better (and the CORBA losers have only themselves to blame), but ten years after it could have happened.
I did two specs in the past 18 months which is pretty much a record for standards work. It is going to take us at least five more years before a significant fraction of commerce transations are e-comerce (but not value, since a small number of transactions account for 90% of value).
The point is that the Internet does not move so fast that the legislature needs to take special measures.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
There are plenty of ways to incentivize the creation of information. We can pay people to create stuff directly, grant them honors, extend special privilages. If copyright was the only incentive for creation, FreeBSD wouldn't exist.
More to the point, copyright isn't very good at creating public works.
How many other alternate systems of incentives have been squashed by clinging to copyright?
-- this is not a