One will recognise the subsequent relationships between the Law and Technology:
1. typically technology becomes associate degree indivisible a part of the law. In extreme cases, technology itself becomes the law. the employment of polygraphs, faxes, telephones, video, audio associate degreed computers is an integral a part of several laws - carven into them. it's not a synthetic co-habitation: the technology is exactly outlined within the law and forms a CONDITION among it. In alternative words: the terribly spirit and letter of the law is profaned (the law is broken) if an exact technology isn't used or not place to correct use. consider police laboratories, concerning the O.J. Simpson case, the importance of polymer prints in everything from determinative fatherhood to exposing murderers. consider the acceptableness of medical instrument tests during a few countries. consider the polling of members of boards of administrators by phone or fax (explicitly needed by law in several countries). consider suicide by administering painkillers (medicines square measure out and away the foremost sizeable technology in terms of money). consider security screening by exploitation advances technology (retina imprints, voice recognition). all told these cases, the employment of a selected, well outlined, technology isn't randomly left to the judgement of enforcement agents and courts. it's not a group of choices, a menu to decide on from. it's associate degree INTEGRAL, crucial a part of the law and, in several instances, it's the law itself.
2. Technology itself contains embedded laws of every kind. contemplate web protocols. These square measure laws that kind half and parcel of the method of suburbanised knowledge exchange thus central to the net. Even the language utilized by the technicians implies the legal origin of those protocols: "handshake", "negotiating", "protocol", "agreement" square measure all legal terms. Standards, protocols, activity codes - whether or not voluntarily adopted or not - square measure all kind of Law. Thus, web addresses square measure allotted by a central authority. Netiquette is enforced universally. Special chips and computer code stop render sure content inaccessible. The methodology (a codex) is an element of each technological advance. Microchips incorporate in siloxane agreements relating to standards. The law becomes a district of the technology and might be deduced just by finding out it during a method referred to as "reverse engineering". In stating this, i'm creating a distinction between lex naturalis and lex populi. All technologies adjust the laws of nature - however we have a tendency to, during this discussion, I believe, want to debate solely the laws of Man.
3. Technology spurs on the law, spawns it, as it were, provides it birth. The reverse method (technology fabricated to accommodate a law or to facilitate its implementation) is a lot of rare. There square measure varied examples. The invention of recent cryptography junction rectifier to the formation of a bunch of governmental establishments and to the passing of diverse relevant laws. a lot of recently, microchips that censor sure web page junction rectifier to planned legislation (to forcibly implant them all told computing appliances). refined eavesdropping, wiring and sound technologies junction rectifier to laws regulation these activities. Distance learning is reworking the laws of certification of educational establishments. transport forced health authorities everywhere the globe to revamp their quarantine and medical specialty policies (not to say the laws associated with air and aviation). The list is long.
Once a law is enacted - that reflects the state of the art technology - the roles square measure reversed and also the law provides a lift to technology. Seat belts and airbags were fabricated 1st. The law creating seat belts (and, in some countries, airbags) obligatory came (much) later. however once the law was enacted, it fostered the formation of whole industries and technological enhancements. The Law, it'd appear, legitimizes technologies, transforms them into "mainstream" and, thus, into legitimate and immediate issues of laissez-faire economy and capitalists (big business). Again, the list is dizzying: antibiotics, rocket technology, the net itself (first developed by the Pentagon), telecommunications, medical processed scanning - and various alternative technologies - came into real, widespread being following associate degree interaction with the law. i'm exploitation the term "interaction" judiciously as a result of there square measure four forms of such encounters between technology and also the law:
(a) A positive law that follows a technological advance (a law relating to seat belts once seat belts were invented). Such positive laws square measure supposed either to circularize the technology or to stifle it.
(b) associate degree intentional legal lacuna supposed to encourage an exact technology (for instance, little or no legislation pertains to the net with the specific aim of "letting it be"). freeing of the airlines industries is another example.
(c) Structural interventions of the law (or enforcement authorities) during a technology or its implementation. the simplest examples square measure the breaking apart of AT&T in 1984 and also the current anti-trust case against Microsoft. Such structural transformations of monopolists unharness until now monopolized info (for instance, the supply codes of software) to the general public and will increase competition - the mother of invention.
(d) The acutely aware encouragement, by law, of technological analysis (research and development). this may be done directly through government grants and consortia, Japan's MITI being the best example of this approach. It may be done indirectly - for example, by liberating up the capital and labour markets which frequently ends up in the formation of risk or working capital invested with in new technologies. The USA is that the most outstanding (and, now, emulated) example of this path.
4. A Law that can't be created noted to the group or that can't be effectively enforced could be a "dead letter" - not a law within the believer, dynamic sense of the word. for example, the Laws of Hammurapi (his codex) square measure still out there (through the internet) to all or any. Yet, will we contemplate them to be THE or maybe A Law? we have a tendency to don't and this is often as a result of Hammurabi's codex is each unknown to the group and irrelevant. Hammurabi's Laws square measure irrelevant not as a result of they're asynchronous. shariah is as asynchronous as Hammurabi's code - nonetheless it's applicable and applied in several countries. pertinency is that the results of social control. Laws square measure manifestations of asymmetries of power between the state and its subjects. Laws square measure the enshrining of violence applied for the "common good" (whatever that's - it's a shifting, relative concept).
Technology plays an essential role in each the dissemination of data and in social control efforts. In alternative words, technology helps teach the voters what square measure the laws and the way square measure they doubtless to be applied (for instance, through the courts, their choices and precedents). a lot of significantly, technology enhances the effectiveness of enforcement and, thus, renders the law applicable. Police cars, court tape recorders, polymer imprints, process, phone sound, surveillance, satellites - square measure all instruments of simpler enforcement. during a broader sense, ALL technology is at the disposal of this or that law. Take defibrillators. they're wont to resuscitate patients tormented by severe viscus arrhythmia's. however such revivification is obligatory by LAW. So, the electronic device - a technological instrument - is, in a way, a enforcement device.
