US Law Can't Keep Up With Technology -- and Why That's a Good Thing (newsweek.com)

HughPickens.com writes: In the 1910s, the number of cars in the US exploded from 200,000 to 2.5 million. The newfangled machines scared horses and ran over pedestrians, but by the time government could pass the very first traffic law, it was too late to stop them. Now Kevin Matley writes in Newsweek that thanks to political gridlock in the US, lawmakers respond to innovations with all the speed of continental drift. New technologies spread almost instantly and take hold with almost no legal oversight. According to Matley, this is terrific for tech startups, especially those aimed at demolishing creaky old norms—like taxis, or flight paths over crowded airspace, or money. "Drone aircraft are suddenly filling the sky, and a whole multibillion-dollar industry of drone making and drone services has taken hold," says Matley. "If the FAA had been either farsighted or fast moving, at the first sign of drones it might've outlawed them or confined them to someplace like Oklahoma where they can't get in the way of anything too important. But now the FAA is forced to accommodate drones, not the other way around." Bitcoin is another example of a technology that's too late to stop. "But have you heard the word bitcoin uttered once in any of the presidential debates? Government doesn't even understand bitcoin, and that's been really good for it." Uber and Airbnb show how to execute this outrun-the-government strategy. By the time cities understood what those companies were doing, it was too late to block or seriously limit them.

Comments

Re:Bitcoin isn't the best example.

[Richard_at_work]

None of the examples are particularly good:

Bitcoin - lots of investigation from the SEC et al, rules laid out and restrictions put in place.

Uber - don't we pretty much have at least one story a week about Uber being banned in particular locations after failing to follow requirements for taxi services already in place?

AirBnB - massive legal issues, banned in NYC for a time, required to implement hotel taxes.

I don't think any of the examples are actually examples of things outrunning the government successfully.

Since when does America attack her tinkerers?

[WOOFYGOOFY]

So what is the assertion here- the government will stop technology as soon as it gets a whiff of what's going on? Are you sure you're not mixing up the government with your parents?

The government has no interest in stopping the forward movement of technology, nor do they have a historical record of trying to do so. The idea that they *might have* stopped the automobile or drones or bitcoin is just that, an idea you have for some reason. It's a historical counterfactual injected to frame the government as technologically regressive.

I see no evidence that the government is ideologically technologically regressive. If your point is that politicians think the internet is a like a bunch of old fashonied vacuum tubes through which messages get sent (which actually is not a terrible analogy) then consider that about as many older movie stars and writers and artists don't use or *get* modern technology as politicians, who skew heavily upwards in age.

Just recalling instances from one day's reading and listening Richard Gere isn't on Twitter and Richard Ford writes his novels longhand without a computer. So it goes.

OTOH we fund via DARPA and other programs vast amounts of the most cutting edge science, science which if it were declassified would seem like magic to us. We're talking advances in things like human cloning and quantum computers which are mind blowing even to readers of /.

So where is this "good thing they didn't know about THIS" attitude coming from? America celebrates it's inventors, tinkerers, mavericks, oddballs. All these things you cite are products of tinkering. They're not basic science but the application of well known technologies to solve problems in novel ways.

Say what you want about America, pre-emptive legislation is not in American's DNA. If something becomes big enough to start impacting innocent bystanders, broadly considered, then Congress steps in, as is its right and duty.

Re:Why should they?

[Attila Dimedici]

Actually, you raise a good point. Recently the California Coastal Commission enacted a regulation banning the breeding of orcas at Sea World. The mission of the California Coastal Commission is "To protect, conserve, restore, and enhance the environment of the California coastline". What does Sea World breeding orcas have to do with that mission?

The Commission's justification for this regulation was that no one else was regulating Sea World in this area, so they were free to do so. Notice, they did not point to a law which gave them the authority to regulate Sea World. They just assumed that such regulation was appropriate and, since no other government agency was doing so, enacted a regulation.

This is NOT how our government is supposed to work.