Internet

Infinite? In the Political Realm, The Internet May Not be Big Enough for Everyone

October 18, 2014
Internet

Will Orlady, MJLST Staff Member

The Internet is infinite. At least, that’s what I thought. But Ashley Parker, a New York Times reporter doesn’t agree. When it comes to political ad space, our worldwide information hub may not be the panacea politicians hoped for this election season.

Parker based her argument on two premises. First, not all Internet content providers are equal, at least when it comes to attracting Internet traffic. Second, politicians–especially those in “big” elections–wish to reach more people, motivating their campaigns to run ads on a major content hubs i.e. YouTube.

But sites like YouTube can handle heavy network traffic. And, for the most part, political constituents do not increase site traffic for the purpose of viewing (or hearing) political ads. So what serves to limit a site’s ad space if not its own physical technology that facilitates the site’s user experience? Parker contends that the issue is not new: it’s merely a function of supply and demand.

Ad space on so-called premium video streaming sites like YouTube is broken down into two categories: ads that can be skipped (“skip-able ads”) and ads that must be played entirely before you reach the desired content (“reserved by ads”). The former is sold without exhaustion at auction, but the price of each ad impression increases with demand. The latter is innately more expensive, but can be strategically purchased for reserved times slots, much like television ad space.

Skip-able ads are available for purchase without regard to number. But they are limited by price and by desirability. Because they are sold by auction, in times of high demand (during a political campaign, for example) Parker contends that their value can increase ten-fold. Skip-able ads are, however, most seriously limited by their lack of desirability. Assuming, as I believe it is fair to do here, that most Internet users actually skip the skip-able ads, advertising purchasers would be incentivized to purchase a site’s “reserved by” advertising space.

“Reserved by” ads are sold as their name indicates, by reservation. And if the price of certain Internet ad space is determined by time or geography, it is no longer fungible. Thus, because not all Internet ad space is the same in price, quality, and desirability, certain arenas of Internet advertising are finite.

Parker’s argument ends with the conclusion that political candidates will now compete for ad space on the Internet. This issue, however, is not necessarily problematic or novel. Elections have always been adversarial. And I am not convinced that limited Internet ad space adds to campaign vitriol. An argument could be made to the contrary: that limited ad space will confine candidate to spending resources on meaningful messages about election issues rather than smear tactics. Campaign tactics notwithstanding, I do not believe that the Internet’s limited ad space presents an issue distinct from campaign advertising in other media. Rather, Parker’s argument merely forces purchasers and consumers of such ad space to consider the fact that the internet, as an advertising and political communication medium, may be more similar to existing media than some initially believed.

Apple’s Bark is Worse than its Bite

October 5, 2014
Criminal Law, Cyber Security, Internet, Privacy

Jessica Ford, MJLST Staff

Apple’s iPhone tends to garner a great deal of excitement from its aficionados for its streamlined aspects and much resentment from users craving customization on their devices. Apple’s newest smartphone model, the iPhone 6, is no exception. However, at Apple’s September 9, 2014 iPhone 6 unveiling, Apple announced that the new iOS 8 operating system encrypts emails, photos, and contacts when a user assigns a passcode to the phone. Apple is unable to bypass a user’s passcode under the new operating system and is accordingly unable to comply with government warrants demanding physical data extraction from iOS 8 devices.

The director of the FBI, James Comey, has already voiced concerns that this lack of access to iOS 8 devices could prevent the government from gathering information on a terror attack or child kidnappings.

Comey is not the only one to criticize Apple’s apparent attempt to bypass legal court orders and warrants. Orin Kerr, a criminal procedure and computer crime law professor at The George Washington University Law School, worries that this could essentially nullify the Supreme Court’s finding in Riley v. California this year which requires the police to have a warrant before searching and seizing the contents of an arrested individual’s cell phone.

However, phone calls and text messages are not encrypted, and law enforcement can gain access to that data by serving a warrant upon wireless carriers. Law enforcement can also tap and monitor cellphones by going through the same process. Any data backed to iCloud, including iMessages and photos, can be accessed under a warrant. The only data that law enforcement would not be able to access without a passcode is data normally backed up to iCloud that still remains on the device.

While security agencies argue otherwise, iOS 8 seems far from rendering Riley’s warrants useless. Law enforcement still has several viable options to gain information with a warrant. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has already made it clear that it does not find that the public’s interest in solving or preventing crimes outweighs the public’s interest in privacy of phone data, even when there is a chance that the data on a cell phone at issue will be encrypted once the passcode locks the phone,

“[I]n situations in which . . . an officer discovers an unlocked phone, it is not clear that the ability to conduct a warrantless search would make much of a difference. The need to effect the arrest, secure the scene, and tend to other pressuring matters means that law enforcement officers may well not be able to turn their attention to a cell phone right away . . . . If ‘the police are truly confronted with a ‘now or never’ situation,’ . . . they may be able to rely on exigent circumstances to search the phone immediately . . . . Or, if officers happen to seize a phone in an unlocked state, they may be able to disable a phone’s automatic-lock feature in order to prevent the phone from locking and encrypting data . . . . Such a preventive measure could be analyzed under the principles set forth in our decision in McArthur, 531 U.S. 326, 121 S.Ct. 946, which approved officers’ reasonable steps to secure a scene to preserve evidence while they awaited a warrant.” (citations omitted) Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473, 2487-88 (2014).

With all the legal recourse that remains open, it appears somewhat hasty for the paragon-of-virtue FBI to be crying “big bad wolf.”

Cable TV Providers and the FCC’s Policy-Induced Competition Amidst Changing Consumer Preferences

October 3, 2014
Corporate Ethics, Internet

Daniel Schueppert, MJLST Executive Editor

More and more Americans are getting rid of their cable TV and opting to consume their media of choice through other sources. Roughly 19% of American households with a TV do not subscribe to cable. This change in consumer preferences means that instead of dealing with the infamous “Cable Company Runaround” many households are using their internet connection or tapping into local over-the-air broadcasts to get their TV fix. One of the obvious consequences of this change is that cable TV providers are losing subscribers and may become stuck carrying the costs of existing infrastructure and hardware. Meanwhile, the CEO of Comcast’s cable division announced that “it may take a few years” to fix the company’s customer experience.

In 2011 Ralitza A. Grigorova-Minchev and Tomas W. Hazlett published an article entitled Policy-Induced Competition: The Case of Cable TV Set-Top Boxes in Volume 12 Issue 1 of the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology. In their article the authors noted that despite the FCC’s policy efforts to bring consumer cable boxes to retail stores like Best Buy, the vast majority of cable subscribing households in America received their cable box from their cable TV operators. In the national cable TV market the two elephants in the room are Comcast and Time Warner Cable. One of these two operators are often the only cable option in certain areas and together they provide over a third of the broadband internet and pay-TV services in the nation. Interestingly, Comcast and Time Warner Cable are currently pursuing a controversial $45 billion merger and in the process both companies are shrewdly negotiating concessions by TV networks and taking shots at Netflix in FCC filings.

The current fad of cutting cable TV implicates a pushback against the traditional policy of vertically integrating media, infrastructure, customer service, and hardware like cable boxes into one service. In contrast to the expensive cable box hardware required and often provided by traditional cable, internet media streaming onto a TV can usually be achieved by any number of relatively low cost and multi-function consumer electronic devices like Google’s Chromecast. This arguably gives customers more control over their media experience by providing the ability to choose which hardware-specific services they bring into their home. If customers no longer want to be part of this vertical model, big companies like Comcast may find it difficult to adjust to changing consumer preferences given the considerable regulatory pressure discussed in Grigorova-Minchev and Hazlett’s article.

Anti-Cyberbullying State Statutes Should Prompt a Revisiting of the Communications Decency Act

September 26, 2014
Cyber Security, First Amendment, Internet, Social Media

Nia Chung, MJLST Staff

Cyberbullying comes in varying forms. Online outlets with user identification features such as Facebook and MySpace give third party attackers a platform to target individuals but remain identifiable to the victim. The transparency of identification provided on these websites allows victims the ability of possible redress without involving the Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

In February 2014, Bryan Morben published an article on cyberbullying in volume 15.1 of the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science and Technology. In that article Mr. Morben wrote that Minnesota’s new anti-cyberbullying statute, the “Safe and Supportive Minnesota Schools Act” H.F. 826 would “reconstruct the Minnesota bullying statute and would provide much more guidance and instruction to local schools that want to create a safer learning environment for all.” Mr. Morben’s article analyzes the culture of cyberbullying and the importance of finding a solution to such actions.

Another form of cyberbullying has been emerging, however, and state initiatives such as the Safe and Supportive Minnesota Schools Act may prompt Congress to revisit current, outdated, federal law. This form of cyberbullying occurs on websites that provide third parties the ability to hide behind the cloak of anonymity to escape liability for improper actions, like 4chan and AOL.

On September 22, 2014, British actress Emma Watson delivered a powerful U.N. speech about women’s rights. Less than 24 hours later, a webpage titled “Emma You Are Next” appeared, displaying the actress’s face next to a countdown, suggesting that Ms. Watson would be targeted this Friday. The webpage was stamped with the 4chan logo, the same entity that is said to have recently leaked celebrity photos of actresses including Jennifer Lawrence, this past summer. On the same website, one anonymous member responded to Ms. Watson’s speech by stating “[s]he makes stupid feminist speeches at UN, and now her nudes will be online.” Problematically, the law provides no incentive for such ISPs to remove such defamatory content because they are barred from liability by a federal statute. The Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230, provides, “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Essentially, this provision provides ISPs immunity from tort liability for content or information generated on a user-generated website. Codified in 1996, initially to regulate pornographic material, the statute added sweeping protection for ISPs. However, 20 years ago, the internet was relatively untouched and had yet to realize its full potential.

Courts historically have applied Section 230 broadly and have prevented ISPs from being held liable for cyberbullying actions brought from victims of cyberbullying on its forum. For example, the Ninth Circuit upheld CDA immunity for an ISP for distributing an email to a listserv who posted an allegedly defamatory email authored by a third party. The Fourth Circuit immunized ISPs even when they acknowledged that the content was tortious. The Third Circuit upheld immunity for AOL against allegations of negligence because punishing the ISP for its third party’s role would be “actions quintessentially related to a publisher’s role.” Understandably, the First Amendment provides the right to free exchange of information and ideas, which gives private individuals the right to anonymous speech. We must ask, however, where the line must be drawn when anonymity serves not as a tool to communicate with others in a public forum but merely as a tool to bring harm to individuals, their reputations and their images.

In early April of this year, the “Safe and Supportive Minnesota Schools Act was approved and officially went into effect. Currently, http://www.cyberbullying.us/Bullying_and_Cyberbullying_Laws.pdf have anti-cyberbullying statutes in place, demonstrating positive reform in keeping our users safe in a rapidly changing and hostile online environment. Opinions from both critics and advocates of the bill were voiced through the course of the bill’s passing, and how effectively Minnesota will apply its cyberbullying statute remains to be seen. A closer look at the culture of cyberbullying, as is discussed in Mr. Morben’s article, and the increasing numbers of anti-cyberbullying state statutes, however, may prompt Congress to revisit Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, to at least modestly reform ISP immunity and give cyber-attacks victims some form of meaningful redress.

Minnesota’s ‘Safe and Supportive Schools Act’ Passes (and a Brief Response to Mr. Fleury’s Counterpoint)

April 29, 2014
Internet

Bryan Morben, MJLST Managing Editor

On April 9, many students, parents, teachers, and school administrators rejoiced as Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton signed the Safe and Supportive Schools Act (the 7th engrossment of House Bill 826) into law. Senator Dibble, author of the bill in the Senate, recognized that “[n]o young person should be forced to choose between going to school or being safe. But today, far too many are put in that position.” At the same time, however, many others disapprove of the Act as a solution to the bullying and cyberbullying crisis in Minnesota.

Without offering any recommendation to address the problem themselves, opponents of the Act continue to shoot it down on, what seems to me, to be mostly baseless grounds. I address a number of these in my article “The Fight Against Oppression in the Digital Age: Restructuring Minnesota’s Cyberbullying Law to Get with the Battle,” which can be found here. In that article, I recommended that the Minnesota adopt HF 826 (6th engrossment) to drastically improve Minnesota’s antibullying law at the time. Since publication of the article, the bill went through one more engrossment before becoming law.

In a recent blog post, a fellow member of MJLST, Erin Fleury, made a couple counterpoints against adoption of the bill as recommended in my article. Specifically, Mr. Fleury argues that the definition of “bullying” was still overly broad and could encompass behavior not intended by the legislature. The definition Mr. Fleury quotes, however, is not found in the text of the 6th engrossment that I recommended. In fact, the Senate’s amended version of the bill, which Mr. Fleury says “remedies these defects by requiring that all bullying conduct be ‘objectively offensive,'” is the same in the prior version of the bill that I suggested (with a small change from “harassing conduct” to “harming conduct”).

Mr. Fleury also contends that the prior bill could include “class clown” behavior as bullying because it would routinely interrupt and interfere with the learning environment. Again, I think this argument is without merit. First, it is unlikely that this conduct would arise to the “material and substantial” level of interference required by the bill (and interpreted by student-speech case law). And second, both the 6th engrossment and the amended version signed into law specifically state that the school bullying policy, including what constitutes bullying, “applies to bullying by a student against another student . . . .” (See Section 3, Subdiv. 1, emphasis added). Therefore, a class clown not directing his conduct towards any other specific student would not fall under the bullying definition.

As noted in my article, antibullying legislation like the Safe and Supportive Schools Act has been thoroughly reviewed and recommended by experts like the U.S. Department of Education and the MN Task Force on the Prevention of School Bullying. The MN Task Force was composed of parents, community members, health care professionals, education experts, school administrators, and policymakers. I believe that they have crafted a well-balanced law that should help curtail the bullying problems occurring in Minnesota schools without infringing on students’ rights.

ABC v. Aereo: Television on the Internet!?

April 15, 2014
Intellectual Property, Internet

Elliot Ferrell, MJLST Staff

American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo, Inc. has seen a surge in the news as the parties head in for arguments next Tuesday, and Justice Alito has no longer recused himself. The case involves copyright issues in streaming television over the internet, specifically asking “Whether a company ‘publicly performs’ a copyrighted television program when it retransmits a broadcast of that program to thousands of paid subscribers over the internet.”

Some of the arguments revolve around the technology used. Aereo maintains that their streaming service is not a “public performance” in violation of copyright law because the DVR’d copy of customer’s television content, saved to the cloud, comes from an “individual antenna” accessing “free-to-air broadcasts.” However, others counter that Aereo’s technology does not save them from violating the law because, when it comes to down to it, they are simply taking a signal, repackaging it, and selling it to their customers without compensating those who produce the content.

Personally, I can see the appeal of such a service. I catch my Game of Thrones on HBOGO, and whatever else I feel like watching on Netflix or the free section on Hulu. A few years ago, if there were a way to watch Lost immediately on the internet, then I may have questioned whether it was worth owning a television at all. However, none of this makes for a particularly compelling legal argument.

Perhaps the most relevant issue that will come out of this for the average person is what will happen to the consumer experience. If Aereo is successful than it could lead to cheaper prices cable bills, as Aereo’s service costs a mere $8 per month while the average cable bill is over $100. However, this argument is complicated by the fact that a typical cable package includes a bit more than just the free-to-air broadcasts (but how much of that does the consumer really care about/want to pay for?), and Aereo’s service is available in only a few regions. Additionally, one option broadcasters have in the event of an Aereo victory is to remove free-to-air content and sell it instead, perhaps with a streaming service of their own.

The consumer experience has been enriched by the options presented by television streaming services, and Aereo’s service seems to supplement the current trend nicely. However, with the proliferation of sites like Netflix and Hulu and individual content producers providing their own similar services, access to free-to-air broadcasts over the internet seems kind of like an inevitability.

Worldwide Canned Precooked Meat Product: The Legal Challenges of Combating International Spam

December 18, 2013
Internet

by Nathan Peske, UMN Law Student, MJLST Staff

On May 1, 1978 Gary Thuerk sent the first unsolicited mass e-mail on ARPANET, the predecessor to today’s Internet. Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), sent information about DEC’s new line of microcomputers to all 400 users of the ARPANET. Since ARPANET was still run by the government and subject to rules prohibiting commercial use, Thuerk received a stern tongue lashing from an ARPANET representative. Unfortunately this failed to deter future senders of unsolicited e-mails, or spam, and it has been a growing problem ever since.

From a single moderately annoying but legitimate advertisement sent by a lone individual in 1978, spam has exploded into a malicious, hydra-headed juggernaut. Trillions of spam e-mails are sent every year, up to 90% of all e-mail sent. Most spam e-mails are false ads for adult devices or health, IT, finance, or education products. The e-mails routinely harm the recipient through attempts to scam money like the famous Nigerian scam, phishing attacks to steal the recipient’s credentials, or distribution of malware either directly or through linked websites. It is estimated that spammers cost the global economy $20 billion a year in everything from lost productivity to the additional network equipment required to transmit the massive increase in e-mail traffic due to spam.

While spam is clearly a major problem, legal steps to combat it are confronted by a number of identification and jurisdictional issues. Gone are the Gary Thuerk days when the sender’s e-mail could be simply read off the spam e-mail. Spam today is typically distributed through large networks of malware-infected computers. These networks, or botnets, are controlled by botmasters who send out spam without the infected user’s knowledge, often for another party. Spam may be created in one jurisdiction, transmitted by a botmaster in another jurisdiction, distributed by bots in the botnet somewhere else, and received by recipients all over in the world.

Anti-spam laws generally share several provisions. They usually include one or all of the following: OPT-IN policies prohibiting sending bulk e-mails to users that have not subscribed to them, OPT-OUT policies requiring that a user must be able to unsubscribe at any time, clear and accurate indication of the sender’s identity and the advertising nature of the message, and a prohibition on e-mail address harvesting. While effective against spammers that can be found within that entity’s jurisdiction, these laws cannot touch other members in the spam chain outside of its borders. There is also a lack of laws penalizing legitimate companies, often more easily identified and prosecuted, that pay for spamming services. Only the spammers themselves are prosecuted.

Effectively reducing spam will require a more effective international framework to mirror the international nature of spam networks. Increased international cooperation will help identify and prosecute members throughout the spam chain. Changes in the law, such as penalizing those who use spamming services to advertise, will help reduce the demand for spam.

Efforts to reduce spam cannot include just legal efforts against spammers and their patrons. Much like the international drug trade, as long as spam continues to be a lucrative market, it will attract participants. Technical and educational efforts must be made to reduce the profit in spam. IT companies and industry groups are working to develop anti-spam techniques. These range from blocking IP address and domains at the network level to analyzing and filtering individual messages, and a host of other techniques. Spam experts are also experimenting with techniques like spamming the spammers with false responses to reduce their profit margins. Efforts to educate users on proper e-mail security and simple behaviors like “if you don’t know the sender, don’t open the attachment” will also help bring down spammers’ profit margins by decreasing the number of responses they get.

Like many issues facing society today, e-mail spam requires a response at all levels of society. National governments must work individually and cooperatively to pass effective anti-spam laws and prosecute spammers. Industry groups must develop ways to detect and destroy spam and the botnets that distribute them. And individual users must be educated on the techniques to defend themselves from the efforts of spammers. Only with a combined, multi-level effort can the battle against international e-mail spam be truly won.

All Signs Point Toward New Speed Limits on the Information Superhighway

November 11, 2013
Administrative Law, Internet

by Matt Mason, UMN Law Student, MJLST Staff

The net neutrality debate, potentially the greatest hot-button issue surrounding the Internet, may be coming to a (temporary) close. After years of failed attempts to pass net neutrality legislation, the D.C. Circuit will soon rule as to whether the FCC possesses the regulatory authority to impose a non-discrimination principle against large corporate ISP providers such as Verizon. Verizon, the plaintiff in the case, alleges that the FCC exceeded its regulatory authority by promulgating a non-discrimination net neutrality principle. In 2010, the FCC adopted a number of net neutrality provisions, including the non-discrimination principle, in order to prevent ISPs like Verizon from establishing “the equivalents of tollbooths, fast lanes, and dirt roads” on the Internet. Marvin Ammori, an Internet policy expert, believes that based on the court’s questions and statements at oral argument, the judges plan to rule in favor of Verizon. Such a ruling would effectively end net neutrality, and perhaps the Internet, as we know it.

The D.C. Circuit Court is not expected to rule until late this year or early next year. If the D.C. Circuit rules that the FCC does not have the regulatory power to enforce this non-discrimination principle, companies such as AT&T and Verizon will have to freedom to deliver sites and services in a faster and more reliable fashion than others for any reason at all. As Ammori puts it, web companies (especially start-ups) will now survive based on the deals they are able to make with companies like Verizon, as opposed to based on the “merits of their technology and design.”

This would be terrible news for almost everyone who uses and enjoys the Internet. The Internet would no longer be neutral, which could significantly hamper online expression and creativity. Additional costs would be imposed on companies seeking to reach users, which would likely result in increased costs for users. Companies that lack the ability to pay the higher fees would end up with lower levels of service and reliability. The Internet would be held hostage and controlled by only a handful of large companies.

How the FCC will respond to the likely court ruling rejecting its non-discrimination principle is uncertain. Additionally, wireless carries such as Sprint, have begun to consider the possibility of granting certain apps or service providers preferential treatment or access to customers. Wireless phone carriers resist the application of net neutrality rules to their networks, and appear poised to continue to do so despite the fact that network speeds are beginning to equal those on traditional broadband services.

In light of the FCC potentially not having the regulatory authority to institute net neutrality principles, and because of the number of failed attempts by Congress to pass net neutrality legislation, the question of what can be done to protect net neutrality has no easy answers. This uncertainty makes the D.C. Circuit’s decision even more critical. Perhaps the consumer, media, and web company outcry will be loud enough to create policy change following to likely elimination of the non-discrimination rule. Maybe Congress will respond by making the passage of net neutrality legislation a priority. Regardless of what happens, it appears as though we will soon see the installation of speed limits on the information superhighway.

Cyber Security Investigation and Online Tracking

May 14, 2013
Cyber Security, Internet

by Ude Lu, UMN Law Student, MJLST Staff.

On April 18th, 2013, Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) was passed with wide spread controversies. CISPA aims to help national security agencies to investigate cyber threats by allowing private companies, such as Google and Facebook, to search users’ personal data to identify possible threats. Commentators argue that CISPA compromises the Fourth Amendment, because, under CISPA, agencies can get privacy data of suspects identified by the privacy companies without a judicial order. CISPA bridges the gap between crime investigations and the privacy data stored and analyzed by social media companies.

Google and Facebook regularly track their user’s online behaviors, such as websites they visited or products they purchased, to figure out their personal preferences to perform targeted advertisements. These personal behavior analyses raise serious privacy concerns. Omer Tene and Jules Polonetsky in their article published in Volume 13 Issue 1 of the Minnesota Journal of Law Science and Technology, “To Track or “Do Not Track: Advancing Transparency and Individual Control in Online Behavioral Advertising“ discussed these privacy concerns.

Tene and Polonetsky described that while targeted advertisement provides many advantages, one particular criticism is that users are deprived from meaningful control of their data. This led to various administrative proposals in the US and EU. In the US, FTC proposed “Do Not Track”, a signal sent by users’ browser to internet content providers requesting them not to track cookies. In the EU, the e-Privacy Directive required an opt-in consent for cookie tracking. The authors argue that whether cookie tracking should be “opt-in” or “opt-out” depends on how tracking is valued by the society. If the society in general values tracking as a positive measure to provide valuable services, then opt-out should be applied. On the contrary, if tracking is viewed by the society as an invasion to privacy, then opt-in should be applied.

Cybersecurity: Serious threat or “technopanic”?

April 17, 2013
Cyber Security, Internet, Law Enforecement

by Bryan Dooley, UMN Law Student, MJLST Staff

While most would likely agree that threats to cybersecurity pose sufficient risk to warrant some level of new regulation, opinions vary widely on the scope and nature of an appropriate response. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, one of several proposed legislative measures intended to address the problem, has drawn widespread criticism. Concerns voiced by opponents have centered on privacy and the potential for misuse of shared information. Some fear the legislation creates the potential for additional harm by allowing or encouraging private parties to launch counterattacks against perceived security threats, with no guarantee they will always hit their intended targets.

In Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle</strong>, published in Issue 14.1 of the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology, Adam Thierer discusses the danger of misguided regulation in response to new and potentially misunderstood technological developments. The discussion centers on what Thierer terms “technopanics”–hasty and often irrational pushes to address a problem in the face of uncertainty and misinformation, sometimes intentionally disseminated by parties who hope to benefit financially or advance a social agenda.

In the context of cyber security, Thierer argues that advocates of an aggressive regulatory response have exaggerated the potential for harm by using language such as “digital Pearl Harbor” and “cyber 9/11.” He argues technopanics have influenced public discourse about a number of other issues, including online pornography, privacy concerns associated with targeted advertising, and the effects of violent video games on young people. While these panics often pass with little or no real lasting effect, Thierer expresses concern that an underlying suspicion toward new technological developments could mature into a precautionary principal for information technology. This would entail a rush to regulate in response to any new development with a perceived potential for harm, which Thierer argues would slow social development and prevent or delay introduction of beneficial technologies.

It’s an interesting discussion. Whether or not cyber attacks pose the potential for widespread death and destruction, there is significant potential for economic damage and disruption, as well as theft or misuse of private or sensitive information. As in any case of regulation in the face of uncertainty, there is also clear potential that an overly hasty or inadequately informed response will go too far or carry unintended consequences.

« 1 … 4 5 6 7 8 »

Internet

Contact Information