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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."'"
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.
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Your analogy proves their point.
Cars introduced new laws (e.g., the infamous "red flag/red lantern" law in Britain), but it didn't invalidate any of the earlier laws.
If you couldn't cut across a field with horse and buggy, you couldn't cut across a field in your new car.
If you horse trampled a child and caused injury, you were responsible. If your car ran over a child and caused injury, you were responsible.
If you couldn't transport something in your horse-drawn buggy (e.g., moonshine), you couldn't transport it in your car.
In contrast, a lot of sleazy characters <i>are</i> attempting to claim that commonsense laws don't apply to the net. E.g., how many pyramid scheme letters did you get that were "legal" since they didn't use the mail. Too bad the Postal Inspector held that he did have jurisdiction since they used the postal mail to get the money! How many companies continue to push illegal products (drugs, both prescription and illicit), or "low rate" insurance which has a low rate because you'll never have a claim paid, or any of the other scams in circulation. Or how about the companies that are fradulently impersonating third parties to get past the spam filters. (Want to see the bounce messages for fradulent messages sent out "by" my company?)
Even the new laws that the 'net does need should be informed by historic precedence. The specifics are, but almost none of the concepts haven't been seen repeatedly over the past few centuries.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
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.