law and emerging technology downloaded from

Law and Emerging Technology

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Technology has created new frontiers for the jurisprudence.

World over, the sovereign governments have responded back by enacting various enactments, not to regulate technology but to regulate human behaviour in the new emerging setting.

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Technology

Technology has always posed problems for law but lawyers and judges have been managing the problems by stretching the meaning of the existing laws without breaking the spirit of laws.

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Communications

• Physical Communication

• Electrical Communication

• Digital Communication

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Protecting Advancements….

Legal rights which result from intellectual activity in:

• Industrial• Scientific• Literary• Artistic

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Reasons to Protect IP

• To give statutory expression to the moral and economic rights of creators in their creations.

• To promote creativity and the dissemination to contribute to economic and social development.

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Origin on Patent Law

The word ‘patent’ has come from the Latin phrase ‘litterae patents’ meaning letters patent.

Patent means open and letters patent was used to refer to open letters conferring privileges, rights, ranks or titles by sovereign bodies/rulers.

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The first patent law was passed by Venetian Senate on March 14, 1474:

“We have among us men of great genius, apt to invent and discover ingenious devices….Now, if provisions were made for the works and devices discovered by such persons, so that others who may see them could not build them and take the inventors’ honour away, more men would then apply their genius, would discover, and would discover, and would build devices of great utility for our common wealth.”

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Origin of Copyright Law

Printing Technology

Act of Henry VIII, 1529Privileges for printing of booksStatute of Queen Anne 1709Engravings (1734), Sculpture (1798), Artistic

Works (1862), Dramatic Works (1833), Musical Works (1842)

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International Conventions

• Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, 1886

Defined….. “Literary and Artistic Works” [Article 2]

• WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT),1996

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Technologies and Copyright

History of copyright legislations reflect continuous legal responses to technological challenges which has (a) expanded the scope of existing rights and works, and (b) creating new rights and works

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Digital Communication: Internet

• Internet (the term ‘Internet’ being an abbreviation of the word ‘internetworking’). 

• It is ‘network of networks. • On a conceptual level it is simply a group of

computers that are physically linked together with cabling. In addition, all of these computers must be running software that allows them to recognize that they are all part of the same network.

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Internet & World Wide Web

• Introduction of the World Wide Web (WWW).

• It uses the system known as hypertext to create links between documents.

• WWW is a subset of Internet.  

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“ It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, It was

the age of foolishnesses… we had everything before us, we had nothing

before us.”

- Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities

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Paradigm Shift

Paradigm shift, noun A fundamental change in approach or underlying

assumptions.

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Paradigm Shift in Law

Paradigm Shift in Jurisprudence (the theory or philosophy of law)

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Paradigm Shift & Technology

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Business2Technology

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Paradigm Shift….

Technology2Business

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Paradigm Shift….

Geographical Space to Cyberspace

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Paradigm Shift….

Physical to Virtual

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Paradigm Shift….

Citizens to Netizens

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Paradigm Shift….

Tangible to Intangible

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Paradigm Shift….

Functional Equivalent Approach

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It extends notions such as “Writing”, “Signature” and “Original” of traditional paper-based requirements to a paperless world.

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A Quantum Leap

Leap based on technology to explore new dimensions, facets in jurisprudence….. new level of man-machine interface.

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Moving bits is cheaper than moving atoms.-Nicholas Negroponte

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One Wired World

Technology is creating a one wired world.

Continents…….Countries & Cultures are much closer than they were at any time in the history of mankind.

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Computer Power

Computer is a powerful tool in a limitless cyberspace. Power of one computer is the power of ‘all connected computers’.

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Power of Give & Take…..

Whatever you touch electronically, it touches you back.

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Information Technology is here to stay……

Thanks to technology, governance is now referred to as ‘e-governance’,

commerce as ‘e-commerce’ and signatures as ‘digital signatures’.

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Power to Regulate Computer & Networks

Could we apply the present set of ‘physical laws’ to cyberspace?

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Defining Cyberspace

A Virtual Medium

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Cyber world is not a Xerox version of the geographical world.

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A world based on bits and bytes.

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Limitations of Physical Laws

Physical laws have limitations in the sense that they are uni-dimensional in application.

They are meant for the physical world, which

is static, defined and incremental.

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Law for Cyberspace

Cyberspace is dynamic, undefined and exponential.

It needs dynamic laws, keeping pace with the technological advancement.

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Defining Cyber Law

The word “cyber law” encompasses all the cases, statutes and constitutional provisions that affect persons and institutions who control the entry to cyberspace, provide access to cyberspace, create the hardware and software which enable people to access cyberspace.

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It is thus imperative that the law must understand the ‘language of technology’ and technology users must understand the ‘language of law’.

To say that technology and law are like east and west and “twain shall never meet” would be fallacious. Technological development is a continuous process.

It is improving all the time. Law has to move in-tandem with the technological advances.

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It cannot be helped, it is as it should be, that the law is behind the times.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Thank You

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