The internet is over 50 years old. Its roots go back to the ARAPNET project in the 1960s. Funding for that came from the Department of Defense. The initial message over ARAPNET was sent in 1969. Zoom ahead decades later and now we have the advent of ubiquitous connectivity. No longer is it big, huge machines drawing loads of power. Today phones, watches, tablets, laptops, devices of all kinds under the umbrella of the Internet of Things are connected, exchanging information, be it personal data, big data, or scientific or analytical information. And it’s WiFi as well as wired communications.
With this half century of progress in computing and connectivity also comes decades of legal changes. There are those who say, “You can do anything on the Internet!” That, of course, is not true. Online is not the Wild West. It may seem to be a jungle, but it is not lawless.
The earliest online examples of law on the Internet had to do with music, art, and to a lesser degree, the written word. In the early days of websites, and then weblogs, use of recorded music fell into what was then a gray area of legality. This was not Radio, where music publishers had worked out compensation. Nor was it public places, such as arenas or ballfields, again, where licensing and
From New York City
Digital
Strategy
& the Law
by Dean Landsman