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When Laws Can't Keep Up With Technology: Future Lawsuits To Worry About

from the well,-it'll-keep-the-lawyers-busy dept

Thu, Aug 7th 2008 1:03pm — Mike Masnick

We were just talking about how copyright law has been unable to keep up with technology changes, but that's not the only law that rapidly changing technology is already impacting. As the pace of technology innovation continues to increase, things are only going to get even more troublesome -- leading to all sorts of legal conundrums to deal with. Parker Mason alerts us to a post at Science Fiction blog io9, which tries to predict five future lawsuits that are likely to come about as a result of certain technology advances. These involve questions about things from the liability of artificial intelligence to the privacy of your thoughts due to brain scanning. If you want one sure thing, it's that there will be no shortage of work for lawyers.

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Filed Under: lawsuits, regulations, technology

13 Comments

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Anonymous of Course, 7 Aug 2008 @ 1:34pm

Lawyers?
In the future there will be no courts,
no lawyers, no judges. Your case will
be resolved by a computer once it has
accumulated all of the facts. Fair, and
impartial... no wait! That will never
happen. There would be no free politicians
after the new justice system went on line.

I'm seeing less and less of a down side to
this and frankly I welcome our new electronic
masters.
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Abdul, 7 Aug 2008 @ 1:39pm

The Myspace suicide case was a typical demonstration of how technology has far outpace our legal system. As this Assistant U.S. Attorney, cybercrime prosecutor it will required a massive co-operation of the legal system to help solve these lawsuits.
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wasnt me!, 7 Aug 2008 @ 1:44pm

Re: Lawyers?
in case you were serious.

the problem with computers (even AI at least the 1st few versions) they cant deal with the "new" all rules must be pre-programed and as you can imagine with time and evolution new issues arise that machines can not deal with.
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drkkgt, 7 Aug 2008 @ 1:57pm

Re: Lawyers?
actually the bigger problem with this thought is that it will the judges, lawyers, politicians who will decide who writes the code for the computer, how the logic is going to work, and then hand everything off to diebold (sp?) to put into a system that is hacked by another group in a day.
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Bengie, 7 Aug 2008 @ 2:58pm

AI
"the problem with computers (even AI at least the 1st few versions) they cant deal with the "new" all rules must be pre-programed and as you can imagine with time and evolution new issues arise that machines can not deal with.
"

The human brain is nothing more than a machine with 'AI'. The only difference is that we've been programmed through evolution's geneitc algorithms. I'm sure given enough time and computational power, we can make an AI worthy of ourselves.
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inc, 7 Aug 2008 @ 3:24pm

don't we have enough laws? pretty soon there will just be a list of stuff you CAN do 'cause nothing else will be legal.
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Sarcastic Bastard, 7 Aug 2008 @ 4:12pm

You could all just move to China. Then you won't have these problems. Dictatorships FTMFW!
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Greg, 7 Aug 2008 @ 5:54pm

I may be excessive...
I personally think that anyone developing tort for computer technologies must provide evidence of experience in the field of technology. I feel it is doubly true for the judges who hear such cases, IMO should more likely be engineers then lawyers.

It may be my naivety which thinks that engineers could do better then the lawyers but it is a matter of language.
Lawyers speak a language which is made so in part to exalt their position in society as it requires training to understand. Engineering is not understandable to anyone except engineers out of the very nature of the beast.

I believe the bad laws come from either an intentional or unintentional mistranslation of these languages.
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HAL, 7 Aug 2008 @ 5:57pm

I'm sorry Dave
I'm afraid I can't do that
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cc, 7 Aug 2008 @ 6:44pm

it had to be said
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

and really, we weren't "intercepting" your thoughts, they were clearly "stored" in the buffer
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Wayne, 7 Aug 2008 @ 8:04pm

Re: Re: Lawyers?
Heh, if software requirements come from politicians, it would never be built...
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Tabs, 8 Aug 2008 @ 4:15am

@it had to be said
You forgot the zeroth law,

0. A robot may not injure humanity or through inaction allow humanity to come to harm.

Danneel and Giskard would not be happy with you.
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Spanky Shanigens, 9 Aug 2008 @ 9:33am

2008 Quota Now Met
Masnick, you've been posting like a maniac. Unfortunately now only 8 months into the year, I have filled my annual quota of "dumbass" reads.
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