Linux.conf.au 2016 – Thursday – Session 3

Law and technology: impedance mismatch by Michael Cordover

  • IP lawyer
  • Known as the EasyCount guy
  • Lawyers and Politicians don’t get it
    • Governing behaviour that is not well understood (especially by lawyers) is hard
    • Some laws are passed under assumption that they won’t always be enforced (eg Jaywalking, Speeding limits). Pervasive monitoring may make this assumption obsolete
  • Technology people don’t get the law either
    • Good reasons for complexity of the law
    • Technology isn’t neutral
  • Legal detailed programmatic specifically
    • Construction
    • Food
    • Civil aviation
    • Broadcasting
  • Anonymous Data
    • Personal information – info from which id can be worked out
  • 100s of examples where law is vague and doesn’t well map to technology
    • Encryption
    • Unauthorised access
    • Copyright
    • Evidence
  • The obvious, easy solution:
    • Everybody must know about technology
    • NEVER going to happen
  • Just make a lot of contracts
    • Copyright – works fairly well, eg copyleft
    • TOS – works to restrict liability of service providers so services can actually be safely provided
    • EULAs
    • P3P – Privacy protection protocol
    • But doesn’t work well in multiple jurisdictions, small ppl against big companies, etc
  • Laws that are fit for purpose
    • An ISP is not an IRC server
    • VOIP isn’t PSTN
    • Focus on the outcome, sometimes
  • A somewhat radical shift in legal approach
    • It turns out the Internet is (sometimes) different
    • United States vs Causby – 1946 case that said people don’t work air above their property to infinity. Airplanes could fly above it.
  • You can help
    • Don’t ignore they law
    • Don’t be too technical
    • Don’t expect a technical solution
    • Think about policy solutions
    • Talk to everybody

 

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