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Issues in Science > Technology Outpaces the Law

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message 1: by Jim (new)

Jim (jimmaclachlan) | 744 comments Besides privacy, technology is outpacing the law in many other ways. New items pop up far faster than laws can be made & lawmakers often don't really understand the technology they're attempting to control.


message 2: by Jim (new)

Jim (jimmaclachlan) | 744 comments I'm a Sys Admin & try to stay somewhat up on issues that could impact my systems & users. Over the years, I've seen a lot of laws & court decisions on both state & federal levels that I thought were pretty dumb.

- The original wording of the DMCA outlawed all computers on private networks since that masked their actual IP address.

- Copyright is not clear across media. The film industry is particularly bad in this regard as several entrepreneurs found out when they tried to allow people to stream movies they owned to their own personal devices. One judge said the controlling documents meant nothing since they were such a mess. Still, the industry kept a couple of startups in court for years until the big boys entered the fray.

- A district judge threw out a case against a guy that was stealing emails from an intermediary server. The only laws in place to charge him were the wiretapping laws. The judge said that since a relay server held the emails for an indeterminate amount of time, the communication wasn't live & so didn't fall under the wiretapping laws. I believe she was later overruled, but it seemed to me the letter of the law gutted the intent.

- Back to drones: The US gov't has decided they have no laws to charge a guy with who mounted a pistol on a drone & fired it.
http://www.insideedition.com/headline...

Anyway, these are just a few of the examples I know of off the top of my head & late (for me) at night. I'm sure there are a lot of others out there. What can we do about this? I think the problem is going to get worse.


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