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The Courts Government News

How Will Law Continue to Affect Technology? 67

Posted by Cliff from the stuff-to-think-about dept.
WPL510 asks: "I'm writing an article on how law impacts technology and vice versa, and would like to get the opinions of those who use technology every day. So- which laws have most affected your use of technology? Which have tried and failed? Does anyone else foresee any other possible, as yet unknown, problems posed by new technology (just as Diamond's Rio showed the holes in the AHRA)?"
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How Will Law Continue to Affect Technology? More

How Will Law Continue to Affect Technology?

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  • Re:RIP Bill in UK (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    who do business with British companies

    Why should anybody want to do that?

  • Oh! Oh! Damnit, if only the manufacturers of the things would be forced undergo the efficacy trials!

    ;-)

  • Here in Georgia at least, cops have to give you 100 feet past a traffic sign to change your speed. You might have a similiar law in your state, look it up. Also, they can't pull over anyone going at or less then five miles over the limit, or downhill on a greater then thirty-five degree slope.

    People should know, speed limits aren't 100% absolute, there often are legally times you can go over them.

    -David T. C.

  • That people would proofread before posting.
    From the above comment: "classib=cally bin the untimate dfence " What, did you just copy something from a make file? Trying to be funny? A product of the US Public School System? Is "untimate" the opposite of "ultimate"?
    "Dfence" as opposed to "cfence" or "efence"?

  • For those who missed it, here's the real link: http://www.richmond.edu/jolt/v7i1/no te2 .html [richmond.edu]
  • Actually there is a very fundermental problem. "How do you have a democratic society which can filter out lobbying from corporate and extremist groups, without ignoring the views of ordinary people?" Companies and political/religious extreamists [sic] can lobby far better than ordinary people.
    Maybe the way to do it is to require lobbyists to carry proxies from the people they allegedly represent. If a lobbyist only represents twenty well-heeled people in a district or a few hundred radicals at the fundamentalist church, you could justify voting against their issue pretty easily.

    It's far from a perfect idea, but it might have some promise.
    --
    Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.

  • People who for whatever reason want to use drugs are still going to

    I personally like the high which I get from marijuana, and I also don't consider myself an addict. I only smoke it once every couple months or so. Try marijuana somtime, then you'll understand why its use is so widespread, because the high and after the high is awesome.
  • > Do things happen for a reason? Most things happen for a reason, but not *all* things.

    - systmc
  • So some over-zealous, technologically clueless judge who was about 90 years old decided it was illegal to buindle a web-browser (or any application for that matter) and an OS together, so the law dictates that I must track down TWO CD's to install a basic system, go through TWO different install programs, etc., etc., etc.
  • A bit of a disclaimer, first off. I know full well this is off-topic to the posted discussion, but this is such a juicy topic, I couldn't resist

    Laws against drugs are nowhere near as effective as social stigma against their use.

    This is the case that I have been trying to advocate among my philosophical contemporaries (read: friends) for a very long time.

    The key is to make the use of drugs socially unacceptable, at which point the laws are irrelevant. People who for whatever reason want to use drugs are still going to, but their use is much less likely to balloon into widespread use

    Here's where we run into a bit of disagreement. Social stigma will always be used to steer society in a way the majority (or the most vocal component) want it to be steered. Where the US has gone wrong, in my opinion, is by criminalizing the use and possession of drugs (in general) and the demonizing of their users.

    The best determinant for just laws in America, or at least laws that step on as few undeserving toes as possible, is the harm principle. The only reason that drug laws can be justified is the price the country has to pay (taxes, insurance premiums) to pay for the medical care of people who cannot control their use of (any) drug. (And the corollaries like crime caused to fuel addictions which is generally rare, and violence caused by addicts [rare, too, but I acknowldge that many people and familes are broken up by alcoholism, for example]).

    The ostensible justification of all these laws, however, is usually moral. The idea that the drugs are either inherently bad or are directly causal to evil behavior.

    Aside from the philosphical untenability of drug laws (the government has no place telling me what I can and cannot put in my body, so long as I make an informed decision), the entire War on Drugs runs afoul of just about every civil liberty that every American is supposedly guaranteed. If you look at the history of the War on Drugs, you can trace a consistent erosion of civil liberties and a consistent harshening of Police tactics and goals.

    I wonder how people would react if a serious candidate for serious office said something like this. (Probably ignored, judging from the reponse Libertarian candidates have garnered)

    -Tal

  • I think one of the biggest changes in law to affect the UK economy will be the RIP bill, how a thing like that ever got passed is beyond me. There are still not enough safeguards in place, but because the Computing community as a general is not publicised in the UK much, I never even heard about the RIP bill in any of the newspapers or on TV, only the Internet. Yet it's something that is going to affect everyone in the UK and a lot of people in other countries, who do business with British companies, or are based in the UK.
  • I'm off topic here, but so is the message I'm replying to. I will at least be brief.

    "Government's primary function is protection of property rights." I am very, very glad I am not being governed by you. I would say "Government's primary function is to protect the welfare of its citizens."

    Which is more important: the rights of fair use etc. on sound recordings that are cause celebre on slashdot, or the right not to starve to death in a country with sufficient food?

    I have heard (disclaimer: so far as I know this is hearsay) that Ireland was exporting food during the potato famine - because of the property rights of the absentee English landlords.

  • In Australia, the laws that are currently the focus of IT interest are;

    • Our silly datacastong/broadcasting rules
    • ISP responsibilities, Napster and Copyright Act ammendments
    • Banking and Money Laws (Banking Act etc.) for electronic transactions
    • The various pieces of privacy legislation
    • IT-related criminal laws
    • Copyright/Trademarks and Cybersquatting Legislation
    • Business protection rules and jurisdictional issues
    • The Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999 - the anti-pr0n legislation; and
    • Anti-trust legislation

    ---

  • A long time ago, the idea of civility and order came into this world. We didn't have the necessary time to bring order to ourselves so we came up with the idea of leaders. Society came to trust our leaders and the decisions they made. That is why we have government. Now it seems that it might be the thing that is keeping society from advancing. We brought this against ourselves. It was a social contract. It is accepted by all of society. To go back to a world without leaders would be like going into the fire. It would be chaos. So in the end, there is not much we can do about this. Just stick with the plan that we made a very long time ago.

    Luke
    ---:+::+)
  • Lets face facts here

    1. Since the very recent past we have had people coming over to computers in huge numbers all looking to use computers because they are the wave of the future, and the internet will hange everything(blah blah) They aren't even learning how to use the machine.

    2. All these computers that schools are getting to teach the kids. Most of the schools are teaching the kids how to web browse.. yeah real good skill to teach highschool kids. and the schools that do real teaching are few and far between.

    3. in Politics everyone has has to protect the children because parents can't do it. How did everyone survive before others government showed us the correct way to live.

    4. Laws are out of date and the Judges hearing these cases are well out of touch. normally old men and woman are only even using computers because of my first point. So if the law is 10 years out of date judgements are 5 more years so.

    5. People always attempt to put something from the real world to compair things like the internet.(ie the information SUPER Highway) but there are things that can not and should not be compared to the real world.

    yeah we are heading in a good direction because none of the points I bring up will probably be changed anytime soon.

    5.
  • sorry about that i was in a hurry when i wrote it.
  • I acknowldge that many people and familes are broken up by alcoholism

    This was actually the reason behind prohibition, another period in which the law was dumb.

  • Many "undernets" will spring up across the Internet which use strong cryptography, tunnelling, and have their own email, news, and other systems. I know for a fact that this has already happened, and they have restricted access and fairly complex entrance systems.

    This is news to me. I know of stuff like gnutella and locked IRC channels, but are there authentic undernets that corolate to scientific and military übernets like the Grid?

  • No problem - will post the answers shortly.

    Dont miss these upcomming Ask Slashdot questions...

    What impact has mathematics had on science?

    How does technology influence society?

    World War II - discuss amongst yourselves...

  • Actually, here in Canada the situation is the same. A law has to be passed and enforced before the courts will undertake an investigation into its validity. However, unlike the situation in the States, if a law is found to break the Constitution, it can in many cases be re-enacted, with a special clause that basically says "we know it breaks the Constitution, and we really don't care - it's law anyway." This has only been used twice, but it's a scary provision.
  • The government as made certain DVD players illegal. When they ruled on the DeCSS, the law (DMCA) said all IP for DVD decryption and such belonged to the MPAA. Therefore, anyone who designs their own DVD player must go through the MPAA to sell it, otherwise it violates the law.
  • the RIP bill is actually illegal under the European Human Rights Act - which became law in the UK at the beginning of October IIRC (someone can correct the date, I'm sure)
    It came into law on the 1st October.

    Details of the articles are in this BBC News article. [bbc.co.uk]

    Which part is RIP made illegal by? Article 8 seems a good bet:
    Article 8: Right to privacy

    (1) Everyone has the right for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

    (2) There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
    But second part allows monitoring if there's suspicion of a crime or even 'disorder' involved.

    (Don't get the wrong idea, I'm not defending RIP, I'm just wondering whether the Human Rights Act actually does make it illegal.)
  • Folks who are technologically enabled look to technology to solve
    problems, improve life, whatever. Lawyers look to legal
    remedies. Legislators, (mostly lawyers), do what they have been
    trained to do when solving problems. Lawyers (particularly those of
    the political persuasion), tend not to be technologically
    enabled. That, to me, is the crux of the problem. Legal remedies are
    not the only (and often not the best) way to solve problems. Life
    becomes more difficult and complex because of this huge and ever
    increasing load of laws created to address specific technologically
    spawned issues.

    Instead of solutions, we get legislative junk which doesn't fix the
    problem, conflicts with other laws (call this job security if you are
    a lawyer), has immediate unintended side effects (which can be large
    and onerous), becomes obsolete (embarrassing, but still lending to
    making life overly complex).

    An example of lame legislation:

    Laws were passed making it illegal to manufacture radios that are
    capable of receiving frequencies used by analog cell phones. This
    legislation was later "enhanced" to prevent selling the same sort of
    radios, or the manufacture of radios that are capable of being modified
    to receive those frequencies. All this to provide the illusion of
    privacy to cell phone users. Years from now, when cell phones evolved
    to some new type of wireless technology and have migrated to other
    frequency bands this weird piece of legislation will still be hanging
    around. Maybe our grandchildren (or children) will laugh at us.

    The correct, technologically based solution is pretty obvious.
  • The correct URL for this story is here [richmond.edu]
  • Let's face it, the government is out to get us. DMCA, SDMI, every law related to technology seems to restrict our rights even further.
  • The software piracy laws are probably the ones that affect the most people, and the ones that more people break than any other.

    you forgot about sodomy, which is illegal in the states...and blow jobs fall under sodomy...
    --------------
  • one of the most annoying ways law affects me is the EULA which adds yet another step to the installation process of nearly every piece of software. what a waste of my time. (i'm mostly joking.)
    really though, as far as problems which will be posed by new technologies: just look at england, where they've recently allowed for stem-cell research using discarded human fetuses(from abortions). now there's an ethical, and by extension legal, minefield if i've ever seen one.

  • ah yes, the corporate 'I'. check out adbusters: http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/corporate/
  • Before talking about these things, I think most people don't have the same vocabulary.

    There's a construction tool on an infomercial that has this rotating saw... It has 3 wholes. And this is their "see-through technology".

    Of course, patents are for "technology". I wonder how many coffee cup cover technologies are patented.

    Then theres the fine line between discovery, design, and invention. I designed an invention that my friend discovered on his patented coffee cup.

  • T'was written...Why should anybody want to do that?

    Laughs aside, because they usually have loads of really groovy ideas which our own government is too stupid or too tight to fund, so we have to get people with a little vision to back with capital.

    Elgon

  • T'was written...Why should anybody want to do that?

    Laughs aside, because they usually have loads of really groovy ideas which our own government is too stupid or too tight to fund, so we have to get people with a little vision to back with capital.

    Elgon

  • Law is people. Asking how law will continue to affect technology is like asking how people will continue to affect technology. It's an important but not terribly interesting question.
  • Once I perfect my perpetual-motion machine, I'm getting the heck out of this dump.
  • Haven't you read Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886)? Corporations are considered full persons under American law, and yet you belittle their humanity. The whole person/corporation dichotomy is a false one, both under law and in principle: corporations are composed of human flesh just as you and I are. As such, they have full rights under the 1st, 5th, and 14th amendments to make political contributions and seek redress within the normal political processes as everyone else.
  • The reason is to avoid classification as a medical device and have to undergo rigorous safety and efficacy trials. It's a matter of civil law, not criminal law.
  • The software piracy laws are probably the ones that affect the most people, and the ones that more people break than any other. Just try to estimate how many illegal copies of Word are in your company. The IT guys are usually too overworked to keep proper track of the CDs.

    The SPA [spa.org] has large fines but can only audit so many companies a year. 3prong
  • Lawmakers, increasinly in the US anyway, seem out of touch with reality. Perhaps it's a sideeffect of being in power for decades, stagnation sets in. In any case, lawmakers have shown again and again that they do not, or cannot, grasp modern technology, and the laws they have passed reflect this. Money, as always, talks, and that shows as well (Digital Millenium Copyright Act, for example). But ironically, technology continues, in spite of the laws passed, or to circumvent a particular law. This will always occur, as the rate of advance of technolgy will always outrun the number of lawmakers who understand what they are trying to regulate.
  • Here in germany the EULAs are the bytes not worth they're written with. Why? Simply because in germany you must have to accept a contract before you buy something - and the EULAs (or those sweet papers *in* the box of the software) are only visible *after* buying :-) Another point is that some EULAs have parts that are simply not legal in germany - for example that you are not allowed to resell an OEM-version of Windows. Microsoft recently lost two lawsuits in this case! :)
  • >..there appears to be no way to get people to follow PRINCIPLES, not laws.

    It's a problem as old as history. There's the infamous example of the wealthy Roman who discovered that inflation had drastically reduced the amount of the fine for physical violence, & so one day walked around Rome, punching out anyone he didn't like, then have his slave pay up the fine of 25 asses (probably the equivalent of either 25 cents US, or 12 New Pence, UK). If there's a loophole, people will find it.

    >What people do with said law is more important than the law itself.

    No, what's important is the fact that it has finally reached the tiny reptilian brains of corporations that there is a ton of money to be made under the buzz-word of ``Intellectual Property." (Whatever that means -- having looked at the Ip section of the ICANN website, they imply it to include more than patents, copyright, trade secrets, & trademarks.) And that an unfettered Internet might prevent them from making more than half a ton of money, at best.

    Their answer? Legislation to limit people's freedom, in the wise of encroaching on the public domain. In other words, every time Mickey Mouse (tm) & his friends is about to slip out of copyright status into the public domain, the Disney corporation will lobby & get an extension of copyright.

    Microsoft has been arguing for years that people aren't buying their software, merely leasing it.

    It's this stifling effect of old men grasping after every last dollar that will keep the next generation from new discoveries & new wealth. Who wants to investigate, say, P2P data transfers, when the corporations that control the media, literature, & music feel they need to further fatten their profit margins, in order to pay their senior executives obscene salaries that will come to the next generation only thru inheritence?

    Geoff

  • ...gets my vote for the most far-impacting of all recent technology-vs-law items. Yes, the CDA portion of it got the most attention, but by far the other aspects of the law are the more important and far-reaching, as it fundamentally changed the nature of the communications industry in the USA.

    Find it here [fcc.gov].

    I don't mean to be US-centric, but I'm not familiar with other countries' laws enough to suggest examples therein.

    -Erik

  • I guess the ladies in that fair southern state have never heard of mail order?

    A law like that is only as effective as it can be enforced. The internet raises all kinds of interesting issues for the enforcement of many laws, most of which are oppressive rather than just.

    I'm personally looking forward to the future with a combination of hope and fear. Hope because the internet represents freedom of information and freedom of expression, two of the cornerstones upon which every other freedom is founded. But I'm afraid that it may be corrupted by government or business interests into a tool for oppression in which big brother really is watching you. Which way it goes has a lot to do with what people like us do right now. We are at an historical nexus, a crossroads where the choices we make and the things we do will greatly alter the future course of human history. The world can either be set free by technologies such as the Internet, or enslaved by them. Which it will be is up to us.

    Lee Reynolds
  • Laws against drugs are nowhere near as effective as social stigma against their use. You really should watch a serial documentary that has been playing on the history channel. It's called "Hooked: Illegal drugs and how they got that way." It covers such drugs as heroin, marijuana, cocaine, and how it came to pass that there were federal laws against their possession and use. I do agree that the war on drugs has largely been a war on our citizens, but I don't think legitimizing drugs is the answer. Drugs are very harmful to the societies in which they have been widely used. The key is to make the use of drugs socially unacceptable, at which point the laws are irrelevant. People who for whatever reason want to use drugs are still going to, but their use is much less likely to balloon into widespread use.

    Lee Reynolfd
  • one of the most annoying ways law affects me is the EULA which adds yet another step to the installation process of nearly every piece of software. what a waste of my time.

    There are also attempts to extend the concept of EULA outside of software, e.g. the Cue:Cat: mess.
  • Another point is that some EULAs have parts that are simply not legal in germany

    However they will continue to exist until it becomes very widely known that they have no meaning.
    It's hardly uncommon for companies to put all sorts of clauses which are of questionable legal standing in contracts. e.g. "We disclaim anything except what the can't legally disclaim", with many people simply not knowing which legal rights they cannot trivially sign away and which they can't sign away at all.
  • Lawmakers, increasinly in the US anyway, seem out of touch with reality. Perhaps it's a sideeffect of being in power for decades, stagnation sets in.

    Actually there is a very fundermental problem. "How do you have a democratic society which can filter out lobbying from corporate and extremist groups, without ignoring the views of ordinary people?" Companies and political/religious extreamists can lobby far better than ordinary people.
  • Law is a very funny thing, and funnier still is the American attitude that any laws they pass are enforceable globally (examples such as the Helms-Burton Act, relating to trade with Cuba, spring to mind very quickly).

    Also the way in which US laws are assumed be constitutional until proven otherwise. Which in practice means a good enough lobbying group can get anything passed into law, regardless of any constitutional restriction.
  • Maybe the way to do it is to require lobbyists to carry proxies from the people they allegedly represent. If a lobbyist only represents twenty well-heeled people in a district or a few hundred radicals at the fundamentalist church, you could justify voting against their issue pretty easily.

    However you then need a method of verifying proxies. Otherwise a large corporation could use their entire staff, shareholder and customer base as "proxies". Or a radical political group could claim "proxies" through affiliation with other groups. e.g. a radical church claiming to represent all churchs of a denomination.
    These people are already familiar with ways to inflate the number of people they claim to represent. e.g. using terms like "Moral Majority".

  • http://www.richmond.edu/jolt/v7i1/n ote 2.html [richmond.edu] is what you're looking for.

  • I am told that it has already passed the full House, on a voice vote rammed through by good ol' Dennis Hastert.

    Those of you in Hastert's district, please WRITE HARD-COPY LETTERS (they count more) demanding to know why he put his weight behind such a ridiculous and un-Constitutional bill. I suppose that we're unlikely to get a veto at this date; Clinton never saw a government power he didn't like either.
    --
    Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.

  • Law is a very funny thing, and funnier still is the American attitude that any laws they pass are enforceable globally (examples such as the Helms-Burton Act, relating to trade with Cuba, spring to mind very quickly).

    At the end of the day, people that understand the problems that today's technology laws are making will start moving themselves, at the very least in a virtual manner, to jurisdictions where such things aren't problematic, or don't exist. One classic example of this is (or will be) HavenCo [havenco.com]. Based on the Pseudostate of Sealand, is a place which is basically lawless, and proud of the fact. As long as you don't peddle kiddie porn, you will be able to host just about anything on their servers.

    HavenCo's existance could, theoretically, be ignored if ISPs are forced to filter the IP addresses to which users are allowed to connect. However, this is an impractical technology to use, as there are a vast array of methods available to get around it.

    BTW, HavenCo has been mentioned on Slashdot here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org].
  • The URL in the main story was incorrect.
    Click here for the corrected URL: http://www.richmond.edu/jolt/v7i1/note2.html [richmond.edu] I have noted this problem before. Possible slashcode bug?
  • ...there appears to be no way to get people to follow PRINCIPLES, not laws.

    "Don't steal" is common sense in theory, but enforcing that is pretty useless. What exactly is theft, anyway? Well, it's defined as... whatever, and then people just redefine the terms, or find some way to skate around the exact language of the definition and do it anyway.

    Law and technology... well, I think what's more important than "what laws are on the books" is "what kinds of principles is this leading to" and "how are people trying to enforce/not enforce this?"

    At the risk of sounding like Doctor Laura Sslesschingjer (sp?)... I mean principles in terms of realities, not the "principles and morals" definition.

    I mean, every thing to have come down the pike recently has been about what we're doing vs what the law says. Microsoft for example. I think everyone can agree they're doing some pretty vile things, but "this is an operating system enhancement, the law only talks about products", "oh, we agreed not to do that for Windows 95. This is Windows 98. Note the name change?" etc is its typical weaseling around any law and therefore "legal".

    What people do with said law is more important than the law itself.
  • A balance must be struck between civility and freedom. The balance is shifting toward oppression, and if we don't push back, the whole thing will topple over.
    -
  • yeah, the first amendment - it's getting in the way of the DMCA
    --------------
  • system. /test on>

    Actually, a better question to ask is "how are "whore" politicians going to affect technology??".

    When the MPAA and a few pals roll into politicians are only too willing to roll over and support their cause after a few "donations". The conservative "Eagle Forum" explains how Disney has clout with the republican congress [eagleforum.org].

    Or maybe a senator can be bought off by letting him ride around in a corporate jet when running for office. In return you can get your patent extended. [go.com]

    Or maybe you can get a congressional staffer to help you in changing the law by adding a couple of words [salon.com], and giving him a job once he leaves town.

    So if I wanted to see a bunch of prostitutes, I wouldn't go to the street corner, I'd just head to the brothel "capitol hill".

    Yes, this has been a flame. If this had actually been an all out fire, politicians would be finding themselves hosed. Your revolutionary leader would have then given you instructions on how to proceed.

    /test off>
  • In the mid 1980s, Louisiana passed a law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of all devices resembling sexual organs or "designed or marketed ... for the stimulation of human genital organs." Louisiana's supreme court recently struck down that ban 6-1, but before then, an entire category of technology was denied to Louisianans (and Alabamans by a similar law) simply because of prudish morality.

  • Re:RIP Bill in UK (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15, 2000 @01:08PM (#704479)

    Sadly the U.K is not alone in this. Our own illustrious Congress here in the U.S. is attempting to enact a similar bill s.2516 "The Fugitive Apprehension Act" would provide the same kinds of government policies here. In this case the goal is to ensure that the govenrment can locate fugitives by searching through their friends' and relatives' posessions.

    The interesting aspect of our bill is the principle of delayed notification. For (perhaps loogical provided you don;t trust people) The government is entitled to search your records at a bank or at your ISP and "Delay Notifying You" until such time as they deem it appropriate. Presumably this time and the time when it's too late for you to get back at them will coincide. This delayed notification clause also allows them to arrest anyone (a bank clerk or ISP worker say) who is kind enough to tell you that your e-mails are being or have been read. Like the U.K. Bill this one requires explicit ISP cooperation.

    By far the most pointed element of this bill is the fact that all of this can take place without a warrant. The requirement that a Judge grant permission to invade someone's privacy is missing from this bill. This is interesting since warrants have classib=cally bin the untimate dfence of people's liberty and rights against overzealous justice officials. In place of the warrant is something called "Administrative approval." I'm not sure who's approval that connotates (U.S. Justive department probably) but certanly not an unbiased party."

    Currently Congress is due to go on the capaign trail soon so this bill may or may not be heald off. At the moment it is sitting in a House subcomittee. You can find the deatails on www.congress.gov Incidentally the bill was sposored by Strom Thurmond. AC

  • Consolidation of databases (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15, 2000 @12:04PM (#704480)
    I believe that one of the most dramatic ways in which laws have been affecting technology as of late has to do with database implementation. Deadbeat Dad laws have finally enabled the collection of a single unique identifier, the SSN, for all US citizens. To be able to do much of anything with regards to state or government agencies (such as getting a driver's license, fishing license, etc) you'll have to supply your SSN. What this ultimately means is that a myriad of previously disjoint databases spanning many different government agencies are going to be searchable with a single key, and the ramifications of that in terms of everyday technology, even where it affects non-geeks, is staggering.

  • Australian Net Censorship (Score:3)

    by gribbly ( 39555 ) on Sunday October 15, 2000 @01:40PM (#704481)

    I live in QLD Australia. In June '99 the Federal Government made an amendment to the Broadcasting Services Act. This amendment introduced a "complaint based [aba.gov.au]" internet censorship system. It came came into effect one the 1st of January 2000.

    I haven't noticed the slightest bit of difference. There was a lot of puffing and blowing in Parliament about Protecting the Children and applying the same standards we have for movies and TV to the internet. There was talk of filtering all packets that came into Australia after the (startlingly obvious) point was made that most content viewed in Australia is hosted overseas.

    Informed opinion (i.e., that of people who actually used computers/the internet) was that the proposed scheme was ludicrous and unworkable (ISPs are legally require to "make available" client side filtering software, although no-one seems to know if use of them is supposed to be mandatory), and time has shown that opinion to be correct. The scheme isn't the slightest hinderance to accessing "undesirable" content, it has cost millions of taxpayer dollars, and it has made Australia look like an IT backwater (which it isn't). Check out this link [efa.org.au] for an overview of the law.

    At the time I said to people "this is the thin edge of a nasty wedge", and I'm still concerned that I may be right. While the law in its current form is more stupid than problematic, I'm deeply uncomfortable that it sits there packing some nasty penalties for non-complying ISPs. When there's a precedent for blocking one form of "undesirable content" it means that the infrastructure is right there when the government wants to block another form of "undesirable content".

    Hope this helps for your article!

    grib.

  • Ooh, I want homework help from Slashdot, too! (Score:3)

    by Galvatron ( 115029 ) on Sunday October 15, 2000 @02:48PM (#704482)
    Ask Slashdot: I'm writing a report^H^H^H^H^H^H article about the most important inventions in history, and would like help from those who use technology everyday. So, in your opinion, what are the three greatest inventions in history, and why?

    Please limit your answers to, at most, two double spaced pages.

    Thank you.

  • Re:RIP Bill in UK (Score:3)

    by andyh1978 ( 173377 ) on Sunday October 15, 2000 @11:58AM (#704483) Homepage
    www.stand.org.uk [stand.org.uk] has details on how silly/scary (depending on whether you're watching or on the receiving end) the RIP bill is.

    Of particular interest is the letter to Jack Straw [stand.org.uk] complete with encrypted confession to an unnamed crime. As it explains, under the RIP bill Jack Straw could be imprisoned unless he can prove that he does not have the decryption key. Proving you do not have something is a little tricky, of course.

    And even you can prove that, you're still liable for imprisonment unless you give the police information enabling them to get the key.

    A full guide to the implications of the bill is here. [stand.org.uk]

    As the previous poster mentioned, press coverage of the bill has been extremely limited, which is surprising given the far reaching effects on the right to privacy it has.

  • Just the opposite. (Score:3)

    by Veteran ( 203989 ) on Monday October 16, 2000 @06:08AM (#704484)
    I think the more important question is how will technology influence the law. As law has an increasing effect on technology - more and more technologically savvy people will begin to look at the law. If they do so critically - they will begin to realize that we have been sold a pile of rotting dingo's kidneys by the Dogbert types who created the structure of the law in the first place.

    The fact that the law functions as an immune system for society means that it is susceptible to the work of people who are the societal equivalent of the AIDS virus; people who corrupt the structure of the legal system to their own destructive ends.

    Because the law is uniquely devoted to the control of evil in society - it is the one societal system which evil feels, and has always felt, a pressing need to control and shape.

    Does anyone seriously believe that holding red hot pokers to someone's tongue was the idea of good people? Ancient legal systems were - from our perspective - obviously the work of evil. Modern ones still are, they are just packaged so as to make that evil influence blend in invisibly.

    --

    The law, 100's of millions of lines of code, not one line of which has ever been tested to see if it works.

  • Re:People are law (Score:4)

    by romco ( 61131 ) on Sunday October 15, 2000 @12:16PM (#704485) Homepage
    In theory yes, in pratice big business pushes
    for most of the laws.

    We who believe in open source have won a few
    but we have the same problem the indians had
    when the amercas were discovered.

    The indians believe that land belongs to no-one.
    This is why they "sold" land for little or no
    money.

    The settlers took full advange of this. Now indians live on reserves and "americans" own the land.

    Most people on slashdot thank that standards
    should be open. However open standards do not
    allow big business to leverage markets so
    big business will fight this by lobbying for
    new laws and patenting every thing in site.

    As much as I am voting for companies that promote
    open source software and standards (redhat, valinux etc )it seems that companies who make money keeping standards and software development
    closed (ala microsoft) will have several advantanages.

    Unless our goverment leans real hard to the left
    big business will have an advantage.

    The real challange for open source is not just
    write better software and open standards but
    to also learn how to market it and leverage it
    better than closed source companies.

    Lets face it. Most people that are using open
    source are not paying for the software and are
    paying little to no money for support.

    Everything else being equal closed source comanies
    have a lot more money to market there products and
    lobby goverment with.

    Sadly unless something changes in our laws or
    someone finds a way to make open source more
    profitable than closed source we have a hard road ahead of us.

  • Activity Taxes Harm Technology Most (Score:4)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) on Sunday October 15, 2000 @03:18PM (#704486) Homepage Journal
    By far, the single most technologically inhibiting area of law is the taxation of economic activity: income, capital gains, sales, value added, etc. Optimization of activity is the primary driver for technology. Taxing increased activity resulting from advances in technology is highly inhibitory and unjustifiable.

    Government's primary function is protection of property rights, not the active exercise of those rights. Therefore it is property rights, not activities, that should be taxed. The government should be held accountable for property losses, as is any insurer; particularly losses due to government malfeasance as protector. But the government should _not_ be held accountable for losses to property rights for which it is not paid a tax. Exemptions for taxation naturally extend to the property rights traditionally protected by the head of the household, such as home and tools of the trade (which are also protected from creditor confiscation under traditional notions of bankruptcy).

    Such tax exemptions should include patents held by the inventor as they are quite naturally an extension of the concept of "tools of the trade".

    The main symptom of activity taxation is the distance created between technology and capital. The legalistic literacy needed to avoid activity taxation is enormous and it is acquired at the expense of technological literacy. The best example of this is the enormous industry of tax accountants and lawyers who sit at the right hand of any corporate CEO. "flat tax" proposals never really go anywhere due to the fact that they are taxing all activity "evenly". Such proposals are the reductio ad absurdum of activity taxation. It is simply impossible to tax all activity. Voluminous exemptions are needed or else the economy would be so impeded that even the government recognizes it would suffer enormously. This creates yet another industry of lobbyists who attempt to off-load their clients of these burdens.

    I put out a white paper on a net asset tax in 1992 [ibm.com] after having participated in passing a couple of laws to reform technology policy at the federal level, including tax policy. But over the years I've become much more realistic and therefore radical in my thinking. I now believe those that proclaim themselves to be "libertarians" need to take their own rhetoric more seriously by pursuing something like my proposal for Warrior's Insurance [geocities.com]. But that's only if they want to be honest with themselves, which is doubtful. Even Ayn Rand couldn't face the fact that at some point the word games have to stop.

  • The Law Reacts (Score:4)

    by rigau ( 122636 ) on Sunday October 15, 2000 @12:03PM (#704487)
    A lot of people are constantly complaining about the law being behind the times and how it cant hope to keep up with technology. Some try to use these complaints as some sort of excuse to not regulate technology in the least. This atitudes show a lack of understanding of how the law works. The law cannot spend its time trying to predict each twist and turn that our culture will take and what actions will be necessary because of these twists. The law places a high value on precedents. So in a sense it constantly looks at the past. Because of this attempting to change the law is hard and will always be hard. This is necessary because a premium is placed on constancy. The law needs to be as constant as posible. What was wrong yesterday cannot out of the blue be right today or vice versa. Changes in the law will for the most part be slower than changes in society since the law is a contractual agreement between all the members of the societal group and it must wait until the societal group is ready to codify its new belief. Sure the law makes discrimination illegal but discrimination still exists. This doesn't mean that the change in the law was not a reactionto changes in society. It was necessary to go through the equal rights movement to get some changes in the law. The law follows society and tries to solidify what most people in that society believe is the correct way of dealing with specific problems. Sure the law will and can be perverted by entities that are powerful in that society (a la M$ employing the son of the chief supreme court justice) but even that shows what the belief structure of the society is. We live in a society where money is one of if not the most powerful entity and those who have can try to mould the society as the will. Sometimes the society will not tolerate those attempts because what they are shooting for is either too alien or contradictory to other values that form the culture of the society. So the law is a part of society and its culture and like any other part of society it can affect the culture and thus directly or inderectly affect itself. As a part of society it also mirrors the greater structure of society within itself.

  • Laws fuel counter attacks (Score:5)

    by cluge ( 114877 ) on Sunday October 15, 2000 @12:02PM (#704488) Homepage
    One thing that laws fuel is technologies to fight silly laws. For instance, RADAR detectors. The police tend to enforece speed limits as a revenue source first, and for saftey second. Technology gives me a fighting chance, to know where that cop is (Under the bush ten feet past the speed limit change from 45 to 30 when the road goes from 2 lanes to four makes no sense).

    I think encryption, spread spectrum wireless and other technologies are responses to governments policing (or repressing depending on your opinion)

    It's sad, but in the ever present "WAR ON DRUGS" a lot of civil liberties have been thrown to the way side. In the 1930's a "no knock warrant" would have been laughed out of court. Police dressing up in Ninja suits would have cause a public outrage, but not today. The police say they need more information, and thus more weapons. The pursuit of this information and weaposn fuels some technology.

    THen there is the other side of the coin. Drug dealers (if they are smart) employ technology to try and stay one step ahead of the police. Anti-bugging technology super fast scanners and so forth are fueled by concerns that people are being "listened in on". Thousands on boats that have low radar profiles and good top speeds. They even use the "Internet" to communicate which technoliges are successful with each other.

    In these examples the Law is fueling a duel between police and drug dealers. So far with BILLIONS wasted, and numerous lives lost the battle still rages on. We could legalize drugs and get off this silly damn merry go round but that would stop the people that are making a profit and doing the R&D into NEW technologies, curtail the DEA's budget and put thousands of hard working drug dealers out of work. (Excuse the run on sentence :)

    Just one example of laws fueling technology

    The law provides a profit motive for some technologies. Some of the highest profit motive is for technologies that allow people to "skirt" the law.

  • How will technology affect the law? (Score:5)

    by Randseed ( 132501 ) on Sunday October 15, 2000 @12:21PM (#704489)
    Perhaps a better question is how technology will affect the law. The government and sheeple can pass all the laws that they want, but unless they can enforce them the laws aren't worth much, particularly if they're so stupid that people won't follow them just because "it's the law."

    For example, I'll focus on pornography because it's everywhere and has been a hot issue. Porn has always been around. When the camera was invented, people whined about porn there. When the VCR was invented, people whined about people having or buying porn tapes. (Ironically, porn is one of the reasons that VCRs got so much market penetration so fast...pardon the pun.) When the camcorder was invented, there was complaining that people were using it to tape their sex romps.

    For some reason when it gets to computers, people freak out more than usual. When BBSes became popular, people were being jailed (e.g. Amateur Action BBS [leepfrog.com]). When the Internet became popular, the news media, public, and political scum went nuts, passed laws like the Communications Decency Act, made hit-and-run attacks on the Internet such as the "computer pedophile" episode of NBC [nbc.com]'s "Crusaders" back around 1995.

    But look at the change in culture between, say, the mid-80s and the year 2000 in America. Sex is nowhere near as taboo as it was. "Alternative sexualities" (sexual orientiations as well as things like bondage) are tolerated and practiced far more mainstream. It's discussed more openly. It's more prevalent in movies and on TV. This is a pretty massive change. (As a side note, you can tell how tolerated sex has become by observing how readily people like Dr. Laura [drlaura.com] freak out.

    Of course, banning pornography was hard already. Banning it in the future will be nearly impossible with file sharing networks like Freenet [sourceforge.net]. For better or worse, I expect that technology will have some of these effects over the next few years:

    Restricting things like child pornography will rapidly become very difficult, if not impossible. (The legality and ethics of this is a completely separate issue, which is more complicated than most people think, involving things like different ages of consent in different countries.)

    Intellectual property, in the form of software, music, and video, will rapidly become obsolete. New market models will have to be developed.

    Strong cryptography will become more commonplace.

    Many "undernets" will spring up across the Internet which use strong cryptography, tunnelling, and have their own email, news, and other systems. I know for a fact that this has already happened, and they have restricted access and fairly complex entrance systems. An infinitely more mainstream but very watered-down version of this is Gnutella [wego.com].

    In these cases, the law could try, but they can't readily enforce, just like they can't readily enforce laws against having sex in positions other than the missionary position. They can't regulate what they can't see. In the latter case, it's your house, curtains, or whatever. In the case of the Internet and technology, it's cryptography, systems like Freenet, and plain old practicality.

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