Tech Law 4.0? (Part 1)
In typical tech industry fashion, Web 2.0 is last eon’s news, and Web 3.0, the arrival of which was declared by some over a year ago, will soon be yesterday’s news. Search for Web 4.0, and you’ll already find people staking their claims (and others driving stakes through them). All this, despite the fact that people still debate the meaning of Web 2.0, with some notables arguing that the concept has no substance. If Tim Berners-Lee can’t tell v1.0 from v2.5.17, you’re to be forgiven if you can’t either.
To be sure, much has changed since FTP and chat rooms were bleeding edge technologies. Yet, venerable, old email remains the predominant mode of one-to-one (and even one-to-several) communication over the Net, and wikis and social networking sites are in many ways fairly predictable extensions of early bulletin board systems when viewed through the rearview mirror.
So, what’s new (or new-ish) technologically and what’s around the corner, regardless of whether it all adds up to something that deserves to be called a new version of the Web? And, what are the legal implications? Here are a few of the developments on my list, some of which have been around for a while but are still gaining speed:
The Services Paradigm. Servers have been serving dumb and smart clients for decades, of course, but a host of newer technologies and business model innovations are driving the shift from relatively localized computing processes and data creation and use to distributed computing and data that’s much less siloed within applications. “Software as a Service” in the mode of Salesforce.com isn’t the biggest story here, IMHO, though hosted application services offerings, whether subscription based or ad supported, are clearly here to stay. Technologies and protocols that facilitate interoperability and easy data exchange, like XML; “push” and “pull” technologies, like RSS, Atom and other approaches to syndication; technologies that communicate location and online presence; and a vast range of advanced search, personalization, and other technologies that grok what we and others want and need and what’s available (online and off) to serve our needs - these and other developments will, to quote Bill Gates, pave the way for a truly mind-blowing array of “applications and experiences available instantly over the internet to millions of users.” The emphasis is more on experiences than on applications in this world: consumers and businesses alike will increasingly relate to and pay for service experiences that they may or may not associate with a particular software application, except perhaps a browser.
This shift generates at least three broad categories of legal issues:
- The first category includes a range of largely well-known legal requirements and risks that mainly affect large-scale application oriented SaaS providers, which subject themselves (for the first time or to a much greater extent) to these issues as they do things like build data centers around the world and become custodians of sensitive data that used to live locally. (Imagine any small business that uses Google spreadsheets to log and share transaction info and other financial data.) Concerns here run the gamut from things like creating tax “nexus” in foreign countries where servers are sited to the need for increased vigilance in compliance with domestic and foreign privacy laws.
- The second category of legal issues is all about ownership and lawful use of data and content. Data and content are being generated, moved and mixed in ways that are ever new, and the law is struggling to keep pace. Mash-ups like SkiBonk (my favorite) are just one example of a type of service that draws content from multiple sources. License agreements and/or existing legal principles sometimes define permissible uses of others’ content, but the permissibility of other types of uses is less clear. The law in this area is definitely still evolving, and I’ll say more about that in Part 2 of this post.
- The third category is more global and potentially more ominous. The whole notion of software-enabled services evokes images of public utilities like electricity, the phone and cable networks, and even rail service. And, the whole notion of utilities evokes the specter of uber-regulation. The recent extension of CALEA to VoIP, the ongoing Net Neutrality debate, and other developments and debates hint at a day when the Net may be perceived and regulated more like any other public utility infrastructure and less like the relatively unencumbered resource that it is today.
In Part 2 of this post, I’ll write more about IP issues related to data and content, and I’ll talk a bit about the implications of ubiquitous computing, network convergence, and the increasing use of intelligent agents.
December 3rd 2006, 11:26pm
— Tech Law 4.0? (Part 2) - jeff seul’s techlawlife, Jan 16th 2007, 9:24 pm