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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."'"
Comparing the information highway to the steam engine highway is innacurite. Besides, each situation deserves to be judged individually, something our law makers should be aware of. Simply preserving precedent ensures we will never throw off the shackles of the past.
cyberbuffs are afflicted with "insufficient perspective, disdain for history, unnecessary futurology and technophilia.
I prefer to think of myself as a nihilistic technofetishist.
(Name That Quote!)
--saint
When cars were widely available, new laws certainly came into effect. Speed limits were posted (not previously needed for horse and buggy carriages). Now exhaust limits, to controll pollution, are in place. Free trade laws, or lack of them, were hammered out in gov't because of the money involved. Each tech upgrade requires us to examine how it will affect humanity, and the internet is no different.
Sounds good to me.
Who the heck needs the DMCA, CDBPTA, and all that other crap anyways?
Oh, I know -- the lawyers that bottom feed off of it.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Is venue. Where is the case going to be held? For a website being sued, is it where the website is hosted? Where the owner lives? Where the person suing lives? It may not be totally new, but it makes issues such as thing much more common than before.
For all of you with the wittism to point out new laws came about for cars, locomotives, etc...
The point of the article is that existing laws didn't bend for the new technology.
It was illegal to murder someone before the car. Its illegal to murder someone after the invention of a car. Its even illegal to murder someone in a car *and* with a car.
In the states there is "vehicular manslaughter" but premeditated murder with a car is still IIRC murder in the 1st. The former charge would be if you unintentionally cause an accident that is your fault that kills someone.
Anyways, its just more bs from a news source. Don't they just point out the obvious for a living then call it news?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
> 'cyberbuffs are afflicted with "insufficient perspective, disdain for history, unnecessary futurology and technophilia."'
As a "cyberbuff", I happen to think lawyers are afflicted with insufficient perspective, disdain for the possibilities of the future, unnecessary clinging to outmoded business models, and technophobia.
(Of course, the reason they're right, and the cyberbuffs are wrong, is because lawyers make the laws, and the laws direct those who have the guns. But what a wonderful world it could have been without them.)
We actually shouldn't treat cyberspace differently. I think what many want is for the entire world to be treated like cyberspace, where censorship and repression are difficult and ultimately, impossible for the truly determined.
Information technologies and the internet *are* different for a simple reason: information scarcities are almost puerly artificial.
:)
Until recently, even software distribution has had a physical component (e.g. the media + manual). We are approaching the point where software this is the exception, with the norm being distribution via the internet (free software has already passed this point). Any pretence of software or "content" being scarce in the traditional sense of the word will then be completely bogus.
Add to this decades of corporate abuse of the copyright system (Sonny Bono, et al.) and you have a system that is terminally screwed. Perhaps they are right: we shouldn't be making exceptions for the Internet, we should overhauling the whole system
They don't want a set of laws that specifically apply to the internet because there weren't specific laws that apply to trains. (Great choice, cause the internet, and trains are so similiar)
Let's choose something more modern. Let's say we shouldn't have laws that only apply to the internet because we don't have laws that apply to the phone, or the fax machine.
What's that you say? Oh, so we do have those laws.
How about comparing the internet to the post office? Oh, we've got laws for the post office too huh?
Trains were not a revolution, just an evolution. People already knew how to get from point a to point b, a train just made the process faster. There's no reason laws for trains would need to be made.
The internet on the other hand, is unlike anything before. You can steal something, without depriving it's owner of his property. You can destry someone's property (software) and all they have to do is put it back.
The internet does need laws, but I find that people don't know where to stop. Sure we could have spam laws, or we could just use technology to block spam completely. We could have laws that outlaw unwanted phone calls, or you could buy a $30 device that requires all callers to know a 4-digit pass-number.
What we need is intelligent people guiding those that make decisions... People much smarter than most Slashdoters. The problem is that the government will be happy to spend a trillion on corporate bail-outs, but you'll practically have to work for minimum wage if you want to take a government tech job.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
IANAL, but if I undestand correctly, the great deal of Western law is based on 'common law', the practice of allowing previous court decisions to affect future decisions.
The problem with trying to apply laws to the Internet is that digital technology has caused a wave of obsolescence in any kind of existing communication, information technology, and dozens of other of societal concepts we hold near and dear. Law based on past precidents rather than fairness and equitable behavior can't hope to keep up through such an incredible wave of advancement.
Take copyright, for (our favorite) example. It's an artificial scarcity placed on information to encourage development of new information, bit it music, data, scientific research, or text.
Since digital technology has forever completely erased the possibility of having a finite supply of any kind of information, the length and breadth of copyright law is dying-- screaming, kicking, doing it's best to cling to existance in a scary new world inhospitable to it, but dying nonetheless. Like symbiotic bacteria, only the lawyers are keeping the dinosaurs of companies that profit by control of information alive.
Other facets of law relating to digital technology will go through similiar changes. Those laws that can adapt will make the change, just like the small rodents and other mammals who survived the Yucatan blast when the dinosaurs were obliterated. We will find the fossils of those who can't in the strata of obsolete legal records.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Proof that the author and those quoted don't really understand what they're dealing with lies in the underlying assumption that one nation's laws can be binding on something like the internet. Certainly the French government/judiciary may rule that Nazi memorabilia advertisements and sales are not legal (online or otherwise) in France and take measures to prevent that. However the ruling in France has nothing to do with the availability of such things in India. That is the somewhat unique nature of the internet - it is multinational.
The author further tips his hand by reducing the discussion to a discourse on laws, pundits and law students in America (meaning the U.S.), showing no awareness of the extranational nature of the internet. Just as the internet is no one application (a suprisingly apt realization on the author's part), the internet does not exist in any particular place, making it indeed worthy of special consideration when it comes to legislation and legalization.
Certainly some do get carried away with the internet as champion of true democracy, etc., but the fact remains that the internet does form a unique medium for all sorts of activities carried out by participants from around the globe. It only bears comparison to the steam engine in that it has definitely changed our way of life, but the comparison ends there. Attempting to approach the ramifications of the internet in the same manner as the steam engine was approached is to suffer from "insufficient perspective, (and a )disdain for history..." as well as being short sighted and overly simplistic.
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.
...between claiming an 'exception' merely to be different, or to exploit the fact that this is something new, and making different interpretations because actual use and practice is different than in past cases.
The current exemption from taxes, for example, is simply a 'perk' of being new. It's no more difficult to tax internet business than mail-order business. The mail-order companies are just exploting the disorder of the states. If the states get together or Federal Govt. ever gets its act together and passes a uniform tax code for mail order companies, they will be taxed. Same for internet 'e-tailing' or whatever fancy name you want to invent. International mail-order is also no different from international online transactions.
But there are very real differences in daily life brought on by new technologies. Back when direct telephone connections to homes and businesses was new there was a hue and cry about criminals being able to conduct their nefarious business without being subject to surveillance, very much like the current paranoia about internet fraud and pedophiles, etc... The police used to be heavy practitioners of 'eavesdropping' before the telephone. But there was also recognition of how the technology could be abused to increase police powers in unacceptable ways. So we didn't setup a central phone listening system like some dictatorship, we crafted a reasonable system of requiring police to get evidence that someone needed to be snooped on and get a warrant. We think this is 'routine' now, but it was a very new and strange thing in the early years of the last century.
As a white man living in Maine, USA, I take ofense to it also. But since Slashdot is fair it should be moderated down to -1 pretty soon. There're jerks where-ever you go. /. isn't immune to them.
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
Where's this guy living? Hypespace?
I would love it if his editors applied the treat-cyberspace-like-meatspace and killed his column. Then we wouldn't have the WSJ churning out endless blather about the effect of the new economy. There are no columns devoted to the steel industry or the building supply industry. Yet, this guy keeps going on and on about the so-called Boom Town. (Can't someone explain to him the problem with the column's title?) If he wants to treat cyberspace like everything else, he should leave the reporting to industry rags, not flashy columns.
And the premise is all mixed up.
There are tons of new regulations introduced for each new technology. There's a special category called "wire fraud" for people who use the phone system to defraud people. Transmitting gambling information across state lines is a crime and that law was introduced to stop people from phoning their bookie, not going to their bookie's website.
The main reason that cyberspace is different is the only thing moving from place to place is information and freedom of speech is protected by many constitutions. So any law regulating the Internet often runs afoul of these laws.
It would be nice if the regular laws from the world applied to cyberspace. How much did Kevin Mitnick steal? How much damage did he really cause? I would love to see concrete analysis applied. The fact is that most hacking efforts cause less damage than most grafiti. In most cases, the damage can be reversed by running some backup tapes. I realize this takes time. I realize that it's pain. Hey, some jerk broke into my car last week and it caused me more pain and suffering than any hacker.
That's, broadly, what is now called "patent law". Patents, as legislated in the last two centuries, are perfect for steam engines. One cannot easily carry away a 100-ton boiler, and any new ideas in the machine are quite evident from inspecting the mechanism.
Unfortunately, the concept of intellectual property is not as clear-cut in the internet. Files are copied instantly from one side of the globe to the other, and can you disassemble every binary file to look for stolen ideas?
When you transpose the traditional IP concept from patent and copyright law to the internet you may get anything, from digital dictatorship to outright piracy, depending on very fine points in detail interpretation.
When cars were widely available, new laws certainly came into effect.
And with steam engines came the locomotives and a need for standardizing time across time zones.
Technology isn't as revolutionary as some make it out to be, but it does change things. A comparison is made to telephone calls in the article, but no RIAA was created to prevent me from playing Van Halen on my phone and letting you record it. Why? Quality, convenience blah blah, etc.
I think in the case of the internet and laws with regard to Intellectual Property, the existing laws are ambiguous and/or insufficient for today's reality.
Deep-linking, terms of use, digital music/video/software are in a new venue with the internet. Owning a song was an easier concept with piano rolls, LP's, tapes and even CD's, but now some companies are trying to take away usage rights from us with the new technology when the new technology makes usage easier.
The right to swing my fist ends at your nose, but the argument can be hard to define when I buy a product from you and you tell me I can only use it a certain way and I have no recourse if it breaks. (Copy protected CD's/DVD's/etc.) I don't recall any book publishers printing books with ink that will fade in a certain number of years or if you cross a regional border.
And I don't recall a phone number having terms of use that were revealed after you dialed it.
I don't want to troll into yet another IP/RIAA/MPAA/KaZaA/Napster/whatever debate, but I just want to acknowledge that there is need for new precedent in the internet media. It's not controllable or accountable in the same way as communication was in the past, and society and the legal systems have to deal with that.
That's DISGUSTING!!
The skeptics start by questioning the very existence of cyberspace, which they say is no more real than a "phone space" involving all the people on the telephone at a given time. They go on to argue that something happening online shouldn't be treated any differently by the law than if it occurred on Main Street.
... probably transformed American law, but the 'law of the steam engine' never existed,"
:-)
:-)
First part makes sense, second part implies that one's use of the telephone in their own home is equivalent to using their telephone on "Main Street".
they all have as a core principle a rejection of the notion of "Internet exceptionalism," or the idea that the Internet is a new, unique thing that requires its own special laws. "The steam engine
Comparing steam engines and telecommunications devices is about as stupid as it gets, anyone should understand that much.
And they certainly deride the ideas behind the "Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace," which is posted on many Web sites and poses a "hands off" challenge to government.
I've never heard of this thing before, I don't recognize it, and I think that they're just using it as a straw to hold up and try to cover up their engines to telephones comparison.
And most of the activists continue to see the Internet as a utopian ideal -- despite the fact that many progressives are beginning to worry that the Web is really just a very efficient way for companies to move white-collar U.S. jobs overseas.
Hey, any environment where we can't run up and kill each other in any meaningful sense has some utopian elements to it.
Reducing the internet to the web and defining it as a mechanism whose main purpose is to destroy american jobs is pretty goofy though. Tech has created quite a few jobs locally, as it has about everywhere else. Though I won't argue it overall helped or hurt, I just don't have any figures.
But what about his students? Well, he concedes, they're another matter. Many of them, with the passion of youth, are still enthralled with the whole idea of a separate universe, one they can call their own.
And you wouldn't consider an immersive conference call something to liken to a seperate universe?
Could someone make a picture of a whole bunch of people on "Main Street" talking into steam engines? It would summarize this article nicely.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Look up pan in a dictionary. That particular entry lists one meaning as "a harsh criticism". While the lawyers in mention have perhaps harsh criticism for cyber-silliness, they aren't calling for an outright ban on internet exceptions.
taxation (they keep deferring it, but one of these days they have to pass some rules about taxing interstate e-commerce)
Well, in this point, although not being a Gringo, I must admit the USA has a perfect legislative principle: "no taxation without representation". This has already been applied in the USA in mail-order commerce. The seller, not being in the same state as the buyer, cannot collect state taxes. It's up to the buyer to pay sales tax to the state. Guess how many buyers do that?
In my own country, Brazil, it's the opposite: sales tax is paid in the producing state, rather than in the consuming state. The result is that the richest states, where industries are, get richer while the poorest states get poorer. At the same time, the whole country gets a huge disadvantage in the balance of payments, since exports are taxed at the source, while exports from the USA are taxed only at the destination.
The end result of all that is that the sales tax in Brazil is in the 20%-35% range, while in the USA it may be as low as 3.25%.
'cyberbuffs are afflicted with "insufficient perspective, disdain for history, unnecessary futurology and technophilia."'
Classic marketing/financial services speak, to be expected from a banker quoted by the WSJ I suppose. Anyway, here's what that means:
"People who are keen on the internet don't look further than their noses and take a narrow view, have little consideration for what came before and have an unhealthy obsession for the latest technology and the next big thing."
A nice, sweeping generalisation, that's more anecdotal than scientific. (Or, put simpler, they don't have any numbers to back up what they say but, hey, everyone knows it's true don't they?)
If you can say something in an "artistic" way, use lots of long, fluffy words, instead of a straightforward manner, using plain, simple language, then a job in public relations or investment banking awaits you.
And people in those industries wonder why we don't believe everything they say...
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Any law is basically a set of rules that citizens agree to abide by. By that definition, the GPL is a law. A number of specialised legal thinking is occuring to consider how to handle the various issues .... see for example in Australia
s p# opensrc
:-).
http://www.law.qut.edu.au/research/conference.j
We can apply certain principles of contract law and even tort, but ultimately, the unique economics of information services require somewhat different approach than matter-based products. For example, how do you price risk? Are the CreativeCommons an orthogonal set of "rights"? How does one detect and punish fraud (a big concern given the antics of Enwrong and WorldCon).
When the lawyers start getting their IP infringed upon, I'd like to see how they start to react
LL
What kind of lame comparison is that? The steam engine is not a form of expression. The steam engine was not responsible for a mass communication at all levels (individual to individual, group to individual, etc.) that retains massive amounts of information, experiences, and ideas across geographical boundaries. Sure, it changed a lot of things, but it's influence falls in a completely different realm of human experience. Do we have special laws governing expression and speech? Sure we do, and we don't generally compare them to laws that govern commerce, as we might with the steam engine.
Um...hello!? Just about all laws are based on mental constructs that we collectively decide upon as a community. The community feels that cybersapce is something different, and these guys don't get to tell us otherwise. Also, the nature of communication over a phone is of such a different nature that to compare them is terribly short-sighted.
Sorry, but these guys sound like they just want to be contrarians, staking out a radical position for the sake of academic interest.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
If someone jumps out in front of you and you don't have time to stop, then it really isn't your fault, and the law sensibly doesn't hold you accountable. But you can't just plow through a jaywalker simply because he was in the street illegally -- if you can avoid hitting the jaywalker, you must do so.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Proof that the author and those quoted don't really understand what they're dealing with lies in the underlying assumption that one nation's laws can be binding on something like the internet.
... the internet." It is merely that a nation's laws can be binding upon the French subsidiary of Yahoo, over whom it had plain and simple jurisidiction. As much as some would like to pretend that Yahoo France is a "virtual" company residing in the internet, the Nazi paraphernalia case is a very bad poster boy for accusations of virtual jurisdiction.
Straw man. The "assumption" is not that "one nation's laws can be binding on
Yahoo WAS a bad citizen in this case, and was slammed accordingly. Under US law, this result seems foolish and foreign, but we in the US do not get to impose our constitution on France -- a place brutally savaged by the Nazis. France applied its own law as against its own corporate citizen and its parent, a citizen that faced pretty bad and ugly facts in its own defense, using traditional notions of extraterritoriality.
Yahoo is probably not the best example to suggest that these authors don't "get it." Indeed, the poster seems to have as much difficulty understanding the law as he insists these jurists are having difficulty understanding the tech.
In fact, Lessing was wrong - there is a "law of the horse". One of the earliest legal codes we have, from one of the Scandanavian kings (Ranulf?), has at least two horse-specific laws. And they're interesting.
One law provided that, if a horseshoer made a horse temporarily lame, (which happens occasionally, more often with inept horseshoers) they had to provide a loaner horse until the hoof healed up. This is perhaps the first piece of consumer protection legislation. Note that it's very specific, and, like modern "lemon laws", places the blame unambiguously on the service provider. It's not a general tort or liability law; it's a law that arbitrarily assigns blame for a specific, common problem.
Another law provided that that if someone borrowed a horse and rode it around the village, they were guilty of a minor offense, but if they rode it out of the village, they were guilty of a major offense. Some jurisdictions make that distinction today in auto theft cases, mostly for juveniles.
So the law of the horse did exist when horses were important.
There's a sizable law of steam. Start with the ASME Boiler Code, which is very specific and has the force of law in many countries. Boilers used to blow up frequently before there was law that set standards for boilers and the people who design and build them. The U.S. safety regulations for steam locomotives (49 CFR 230) are still valid and enforced. There's a National Board of Boiler and Pressure Vessel Inspectors.
For a history of the law of steam, see page 35 of this recent boiler explosion investigation report. There's a law of steam for good reason. The first law of steam was enacted in the US in 1838, after a riverboat blew up, killing 300 people. The issue remains; a steam locomotive blew up in 1995, killing several people.
Thus, claims that there is no "law of the horse" or "law of steam" are false. Such laws exist.
This is not new. If a person sues a mail order company, where is the case going to be held? The same principals that have historically been found in contract law between two parties who form an obligation in differentjurisdictions should apply to cybercases and I have not seen a compelling argument to demonstrate that Congress and the Judiciary should tackle the Internet CyberHighWay with new laws.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
The purpose of laws is to provide checks and balances that are not provided naturally. In this light, it functions like a dam wall, where the surrounding hills do most of the holding of water.
With the advent of computers, the main check and balance (the cost of copying and distribution) for things like privacy, copyright, etc, is no longer there.
So what happens, is that to print off a copy of a book or record, I'd need to invest in a suitable press (and such activity is not easy to hide), for copying music now, all I need is a program and a computer, both of which are elsewhise legitimate.
A train, or a car, or even an aeroplane, is in essence, a fast mode of transport. It is still a thing on the road, it just moves quicker. Of course, there are law modifications to adjust for this. In some cases, we give them new roads.
The internet, etc, is something fundementally new, in that the laws are based on the assumption that copying and collecting and analysing data is a fairly expensive activity. Nothing is now further from the truth.
Until we find a way to deal with this issue, we will have any number of problems.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
The article presents a false dichotomy...[lot's of good stuff in here]...The point, which is totally missed by the author of this article, is that our legal system is groaning under the weight of regulations pandering to special interests, and that the good of the people comes off second best.
Damn straight! It's hard to argue for or against the points made in this article, since they really aren't valid or well researched arguments in the first place.
The article seems to blame the average technophilic Slashdotter type for what are really the views and actions of the good old fashioned special interests. You simply can't form a coherent argument when you agree with the points but they're being incorrectly used to attack you.
While most of us would agree that the internet and digital media create jurisdictional problems and other special legal issues, it's really the old guard (and their lawyers) who are trying to use "cyberspace" as an excuse to change the rules, either because:
A) they don't understand the new technology and competitive environment;
B) they understand it but know it will put them out of business; or
C) simply because they happen to see an opportunity to take advantage of the uninformed.
Instead, the people they attack are the very ones who would prefer to see the DMCA thrown out, freedom of speech upheld, public participation, fair-use, theft and damages to mean actual property stolen or broken (vs. just looked at), etc. - that is, the people blamed are instead the very one's who most want to see the old laws (and freedoms) apply to new technology.
New technology has always created new legal issues but the push for the most drastic and unreasonable new interpretations has and continues to come from the soon-to-be-extinct buggy whip manufacturers - not the technologists and visionaries. These lawyers need to check the facts and restate their arguments by correctly attributing ideas and motivations to the proper parties.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
No new laws were made for railroads. 700 railroads went bankrupt in America in the last decades of the 1800's. No new laws were made for the Internet. How many dot.coms went bankrupt now?
How can we expect continued innovations in infrastructure if we don't right now commit ourselves that the next time an important advance comes around, we will immediately pass laws to be sure that those who invest their time and/or capital into building that infrastructure will all get their just share of the gains - and not end up impoverished while society happily rides the rails and surfs the Net?
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Perhaps I'm asking for too much from a short piece, but I wasn't clear on what it was about before or after reading it. Okay, so there's one example of a case in France. Great, now we're getting somewhere-- but it stops there.
What are they talking about? What special laws are they referring to? So, first, we take as a given that there are jurisdictional issues with someone putting up something on a server in Texas, and someone reading it in Germany. And, yes, lawyers and politicians are trying to figure this out. The article does say that it's useful to think of it as a bunch of computers being connected and sending around bits-- thanks.
I'm just asking, because this sounds like an interesting article. There very well might be internet-specific laws. There might be examples of cases making internet exceptions, or not making internet exceptions. I don't know-- I'd like to find out. But this article didn't say a damned thing.
We have Shipping Law,
Trade Law,
Aerospace Law,
Media Law,
Entertainment Law,
Mining & Resources Law,
Telecommunications Law,
Why not Cyberlaw?
It's not that the law is different, it's just another subject-matter specialty.
I think the author has a very good point to make. Unfortunately, the author misses it. Let us suppose that he is correct, that there should be no special new laws regarding the internet. It is just a bunch of computers linked by cable and fiber, that it is not "cyberspace" any more than telephone users create "telephonespace". There should be no special laws, because it is just people communicating. Then why does the DMCA exist? What about the CDBPTA? These are special laws.
His point is valid, but he misses the mark. All we want is a guarantee of freedom of expression. He selects a difficult case, one that many of us (myself included) do not understand. The author concludes that our misunderstanding of international and French law means that we want special rights. The people who are really pushing for special new cyberlaws are the RIAA and the MPAA. We don't want special laws, we just want our constitutional rights.
Yes, the author is right, there are people who want special rights online. However, he presents the wrong group.
transformed society in ways that never could have been imagined before. It made possible
industrial techniques and housing patterns that couldn't exist without it. The internal combustion
engine accelerated these effects.
The biggest difference between 'cyberspace' and all previous inventions (other than, to a much
lesser extent, radio and TV) is the fact that it defies geographic classification into legal
jurisdictions. For example, when I post this, am I doing it in
- Kansas (where my home is)
- Missouri (where my ISP is, at least locally)
- Virginia (where their domain is registered)
- Massachussets (where Andover.net, official Registrant for slashdot.org is),
- the physical location of the server(s) that the domain points to, if not any of the above
- Each of the sundry locations of
/. readers - All of the above, plus every single router in between
???We laugh at the hubris of the {French|German|Dutch|*} government trying to prevent servers
located in another country from carrying 'illicit' material. Until they go after DNS, routers, or other
servers that are within their borders to prevent them from moving Evil Bits from those sites.
Each of these other inventions brought with them entire agencies to police the technology. It's just
a matter of time before this one gets the same treatment.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Everyone here seems to be railing against these 'cyberskeptics', saying they're out of touch with technology, trying to stifle the net, etc. So if you're for internet legislation, here's a challenge:
Name one cyberlaw that you approve of.
DMCA perhaps? Internet Radio legislation?
OK. If that's too hard: name one law which you want to be applied everywhere except the internet.
Copyright? You want it to be legal to download MP3s but not make your own tapes? Want the freedom of speech not to apply to the net?
Sure, the internet has raised some issues with existing laws which have to be addressed (e.g. copyright, international law) - but I can't think of a single thing that I would want to be legal on the internet, and not outside it (or vice versa).
Why on earth is the whole of Slashdot arguing for more internet legislation?
A very good precedent for treating the internet is maritime law. The problem is somewhat similar. When you are in international water it is not exactly clear what law should apply to you. A large body of law exist that govern precisely those situations. A similar approach to internet might be the best.
Few industries receive as much specific attention from the law as railroads. Railroads, especially in the United States and Canada, were the only heavy transportation that mattered for decades; as a result, they affected just about every industry, the politics of the entire continent, and society in general; and the laws, even today, reflect how influential the railroads were. Ever looked at the United States Code or the U.S. state's typical statutes? American laws were customized for railroads early and often in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Special railroad laws are still all over the place. U.S.C. Title 45 (out of 50) is nothing but railroads, and that's just some of the railroad law. Among lots of other things (if I recall correctly): they get special treatment when obtaining the right-of-way; the labor laws treat railroad workers differently; and they even have separate federal retirement from Social Security. I'm sure the laws in other countries address railroads extensively also.
Great, now everyone who googles ` nihilistic technofetishist` is going to slashdot some sorry goff kid's website.
Um, didn't the railroads create a need for the federal government to enforce standardized time zoned. For another example of law applying to a specific information technology, what about the regulation of radio in the early 20th century to reduce interferance.
If this guy thinks we want special case laws to exempt the internet, then he just hasn't been paying attention. What the "cyberbuffs' have been clamoring for for years now is to get the government to STOP making special case laws for the internet. It's not the technophiles who have been making special case internet-only laws, it's the technophobes, and it shows in the nature of the laws they come up with. Stuff that is perfectly legal offline, such as fair-use photocopying a small number of pages from a reference book, or copying a music album for the purpose of changing the recording media format for personal use (like converting old vinyl records to a cassette tape form), are becoming illegal when you do the equivilent on-line version of these activites.
So I say, *YES*, please DO get the government to treat the internet the same way everything else gets treated in public life, which means undoing the crap they've passed about it in the last few years. Destroy the DMCA, the CDAs I and II, and don't lie and call piracy theft. Theft implies that the original owner has had his property taken away rather than just copied. No, I'm not saying piracy is good, just that calling it theft puts the punishment out of proportion to the degree of the crime. Treating piracy as theft is like convicting someone for murder when all he did was get into a minor fist fight and nobody died.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The US and UN authorities IGNORE National and Classification boundaries to aid and abet corporations in the abuse of their trademark powers. This is an unlawful act. They know the solution to trademark problems on the Internet.
.reg - as in apple.reg
.reg would be protected like .gov sites, so preventing passing off and any conflict with the majority of non-trademark domains. It acts as certificate of authentication.
.com domains and new protected TLDs could be used by trademarks for advertising purposes - then redirected to the .reg site e.g. apple.computer or nissan.car
You can legally use any word, words or initials to start a new business without registering a trademark - providing you are not passing off, of course. Take for example the word 'APPLE'.
"Apple" is legally used by thousands of businesses - large and small all over the world. Indeed, it is impossible that they all register themselves as trademarks - they are bound to conflict with many others, being confusingly similar. In my local phone book alone, there are at least five using this word - two garages (seems not connected), a car centre, fruit growers and a decorating firm.
"BUT", I hear you say, followed by many reasons why they cannot co-exist without conflict on the Internet.
These reasons are based on PROPAGANDA, SPIN and LIES.
Fact 1: In this vast ocean of domains on the Internet, mostly non-trademarks, a marker is absolutely essential - for people to identify it as trademark; e.g. a new protected TLD of
Just like the registered trademark symbol ® - this could serve the same purpose - to advise the public that it is legally registered and protected by law.
This
Fact 2: Given that each country has its own trademark system and can use the same words as another, the country is absolutely essential - as in apple.us.reg
Fact 3: It is illegal for one to prevent others from using their trademark. To allow this without consumer confusion or trademark conflict, it is absolutely essential that the class or subclass is included (e.g. computer) - as in apple.computer.us.reg
Can you tell the difference between apple.computer.us.reg and apple.record.uk.reg?
Of course you can. Being text based it is easier than using the phone.
Current
This is all about corrupt authorities aiding and abetting corporations to abuse the Law.
Please visit WIPO.org.uk - World Intellectual Piracy Organization - not associated with United Nations WIPO.org !
Trains were not a revolution, just an evolution. People already knew how to get from point a to point b, a train just made the process faster. There's no reason laws for trains would need to be made.
... apply the same law to the net as you would to physical copies of the same crap in the real world.
It could be argued that "the internet is not a revolution, just an evolution. People already knew how to communicate with one another across great distances, the internet just made the process faster. There's no reason laws for the internet would need to be made."
Do we need laws to govern the internet? I would say that it is unlikely that we do, and that at the very least we need to proceed very, very carefully. Far better to pass a needed law too late, than to pass unnecessary, and harmful, legislation too early.
Do we need to restrict speech on the internet? No, not any more than we need to in real life.
What about child pornography? Already illegal
What about commerce? Our existing interstate commerce laws, tax regimes, etc. are more than sufficient and can be applied equally to online commerce as they are to brick and morter commerce. Buying something online should be no different, legally, than picking up the phone and ordering someting by voice.
What about 'online stalking.?' No different than making obscene or prank phone calls in the real world, or verbally harassing someone in person
What about the children?!? They are in no greater danger than they are when they are out on a public street, and just like in the physical world, it is the parent's responsibility to see to their children's safety, not the government, and certainly not at the expense of my constitutional rights.
I could go on and list virtually every subject which gets raised WRT the "need" to regulate the internet, and in each case point out that the application of existing law is more than sufficient to keep society on roughly the same even keel it has generally been all along.
The problem is that the media and copyright cartels see an opportunity to grab immense power, power that the courts (and even congress) has deliberately denied them in the past. However, the ludditism of Hollywood, the digital illiteracy of congress, and the legalized bribery we call campaign financing have all come together to produce a very dangerous mixture of political cluelessness and political will that may just result in these very powers being extended, with manditory DRM technology enshringing Microsoft's desktop monopoly into law and granting those very same Hollywood Luddites veto powers over the deployment of all new consumer technologies.
This should scare the shit out of any clear thinking individual.
You can steal something, without depriving it's owner of his property.
No, you can't. That sentance is in direct conflict with the very definition of stealing, as has been rehashed here and elsewhere numerous times.
Copyright Violation is not theft. It is not recognized as theft by the law or by any of the freely accessible dictionaries online.
In fact, the only place where copyright violation is considered theft is in the minds, and newspeak, of the copyright cartels, and those who thoughtlessly echo their propoganda.
Even in a nation increasingly afflicted with fictitious legal absurdities (like equating a corporation with a real, thinking, breathing person) we haven't even gone so far as to equate copyright violation and theft.
We should not engage in the absurd, legal fiction that communication over the internet is somehow fundamentally different than communication by telegraph, telephone, fax, snail mail, or an in person meeting over lunch. Fundamentally it isn't any different, it is merely more effecient.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
That might actually be good. It would get rid of the DMCA, e.g., and that would be worth a lot right there. Also the special classification of some cable providers as informations service providers, so that they don't need to share their lines. That would be worth deleting.
There are decent arguments that there shouldn't be any special laws. The troubles are with the special laws that have already been passed. It you want to make that argument, the first thing you need to do to prove that you are serious is to get rid of them.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
What a troll article. Proclaiming that people who may or may not have mastered a word processor are going to interpret the laws for us? The article touches on no specifics but flames away at computer users as ingnorant adlolesents. Would that be the "generation gap" troll? The "sceptics" no more exits outside the author's imagination than the blind straw men he creates to oppose them.
Those treatened by the internet revolution will continue to spew bullshit like this. Those who will loose their ability to charge per minute for telcom will flame. Those who will loose their dead tree advertising empires will flame. Software companies with no real assets beside IP that has been duplicated, bettered and finally given away by the internet enabled free software community will flame. Those who would take something as common as music from the world, and attempt to monopolize it's distribution, really the sale of your own popular culture, will flame. And they are doing it. There is a steady barrage of hostile garbage comming from all those threatened industries. Attacks on sharing, free speech, even knowledge itself are becoming so common. All the storries about evil loosers who persue strange things and end up hurting themselves by being put in jail. The whole "internet bubble", where the internet is blamed for the recent collapse of so many companies that were pilfered by their executives with the aid of their accountants and sold by Wall Street, backers all of the old empires revealed as frauds are attempting to pass the blame from their wanton acts to the victims of their crimes. "Silly people, did you think stocks in our companies were really worth anything?" the seem to ask. All they will have in the end are losses. Obsolete business models will fail and those who fight against changes will have only themselves to blame for their losses.
Sensible people will apply reasonable laws to the internet and all forms of electronic communications. Laws made for snail mail will be appleid to email that will be encrypted and then protected from interception. New interests will find a way to right.laws have become unbalenced through oligrachal domination, Copyright will be rexeamined from it's first priniples bases on the greatly reduced cost of publication. The results will be much more in line with original US copyright laws than those that the RIAA would burden us with. Reasonable laws will be made, barring civil and nuclear war and everyone becoming like Microsoft.
Oh yeah, for those pea brains who would like to call me a strary eyed school girl I'm gonna pop out my accademic stick: BA Classics, BS Mechanical Engineering, working on a masters degree in Nuclear Science. I have a keen sense of history, love the good things that technology can do for people, I vote republican for lack of better alternatives, and I think the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Freedom Foundation are right on. Now piss off, you silly comercial trolls.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Er, no. Actually, the steam engine necessitated a lot of new laws. Mineral right laws were updated because previously-unminable lands became workable. The locomotive, a descendant of the steam engine, created the railraod, which launched corporations into their stratospheric rise and indeed gave birth to the entire body of law called "corporate law". There's a special law for retirees of the rail system (separate from Social Security) and indeed there are labor laws entirely devoted to the rail industry. (In fact a major complaint of airlines is that they have been saddled, by extension, with these older laws.)
So the analogy fails, because there is a "law of the steam engine". As technology evolves, the law must evolve with it. Whole new crimes spring into existence and old crimes assume an efficiency and scope unimagined before.
Should the principles be extended into the new realm? Of course. But answer me this: What best "fits" the discussion forums on, say, nytimes.com? Newspaper article? Broadcast? Editorial? Conversation in the public square? Conversation in a private home? The forum is clearly like each of these yet is none of them. And those areas each have quite different rules on what can said, what can be actionable, etc. So how can you say that this new mechanism, which "looks like" many old mechanisms at once, should follow the old rules? Which old rules?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
[Joseph H. Sommer] also fretted that the cyberbuffs are afflicted with "insufficient perspective, disdain for history, unnecessary futurology and technophilia."
Oh, ouch, like, that hurts. These lawyers are afflicted with insufficient perspective, historicism, lack of forethought, and technophobia.
I find it remarkable that they accuse us of elitism. As if we went to "ivy league" colleges, work for Wall Street firms, and weren't doing our damnedest to maintain the status quo. This article is sheer propoganda. It isn't that they want the Internet treated like every other technology, it is that they want the Internet treated like the things the law already has a handle on, and can therefore control.
Technologies aren't the same, they have different effects on society, and Internet has, and will continue to have, and enormous impact on social organiziation, free speech, intellectual property, and general enconomics.
No one can dipsute the fact that the automobile transformed American society. So why is it so futurology to suggest the same of the Internet?
Insufficient perspective? That must be why computer geeks tend to be extremely aware of environmental issues, for example. Disdain for history? I have a disdain for the things that non-geeks have done in history. Geeks figured out a way to harness the atom; non-geeks dropped two atom bombs on Japan. Sound familiar? This has been going on since technology has existed, or in other words, always. I bet someone once figured out you could use a stick to beat down a gazelle, and then someone half as smart turned around and hit another person in the head with one.
As for technophilia; I call upon these arrogant asses to eschew electricity, discard their automobile, and go churn butter and raise barns. The very fact that we're seeing anything they have to say at all means that they embrace technology as long as it's for their own purposes; IE, spreading FUD.
This article was only worthy of a notice on slashdot so that it could be flamed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Okay, who's the idiot who modded my post above as "overrated" when it hadn't even ever been "rated" in the first place? It's illogical for the very first moderation on a post to say it's been "overrated".
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Straw man. Your hypothetical, however interesting, is not this case. Yahoo has property in France, and is thus subject to France's jurisdiction. If Yahoo ignores the order, France will take it out on Yahoo's french property and personnel. A company having no exposure to France might simply ignore the order, or fight it in a US court should France try to nationalize it. Then US law (and the US Constitution) would apply.
thing that exists in one place at a time, all along the route from when I put it in the hands
of the US Snail until it is delivered to that recipient. If that recipient makes a photocopy of a letter and
redistributes it, the copy isn't considered to be the same act of mailing. But a blog post
goes all over the place at once. It is everywhere and nowhere.
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Fight 'wide' posts - use your own page <br>eaks!
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
cyberbuff indeed.
I am a follower of the church of technology that believes that enlightenment and ultimately ascension will come from technology.
Mankind will someday break the bounds of this rock. We will someday find and teach, and learn from other life. We will do all these things, or our lives, all our lives will never have mattered because we will simply cease to exist with no record, trace or impact.
cyberbuff my ass.
"No good deed goes unpunished"