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Internet Law in 2007

As we start off the 2007 year, many in the web community probably have questions about what developments we can expect in web law in 2007. Well, the issues already appear to be coming together.

Internet Law in 2007

The beauty of the web is it is still a relatively new communication platform and is evolving on a daily basis. From a legal standpoint, this raises all kinds of issues and problems. The law prefers stability. It is also generally slow to react to new issues. Since the net is evolving on a daily basis, this puts the legal issues regarding it in some what of a time warp. Simply put, the law is a couple years behind on issues such as phishing, privacy and so on. Still, 2007 is cranking up to be an interesting year.

One of the major areas where we should see more legal wrangling in 2007 is privacy rights. While you might immediately jump to the conclusion I am talking about how the government invades our privacy, I am not. Instead, the issue of how companies use our private information is going to come front and center again. Specifically, the security used by companies in protecting our information is laughable. It seems a day does not pass without a company announcing it has been hacked and private information exposed. Frankly, it is a miracle that identity theft is not a bigger problem. Regardless, you should expect Congress and lawsuits to carve out clearer rules on this issue.

In some ways, 2007 will be the same as 2006, 2005 and so on in one are – copyright. If you work on the web, you are probably sick of hearing about copyright by now. I am! Still, the issue continues to rear its head as new web innovations arise. The obvious issue arising now is YouTube and similar sites. Specifically, what happens when people post content that they do not own the copyright on? Well, things are going to get interesting to say the least. Unlike Napster, YouTube is now backed by big money Google, and has the deep pockets to fight copyright claims by the music industry, etc. This doesn’t necessarily mean it will win, but it should be an interesting fight!

A second area of copyright law as applied to the web is also starting to show some strength. It is in the field of search engine optimization, to wit, the great game of trying to obtain organic rankings for your site on Google, Yahoo, MSN and so on. Google is at the center of the issue. It has implemented a duplicate content filter that basically eliminates certain pages from the rankings if they have the same content as other sites. This is becoming aggravating for certain sites when their content is stolen, used on another site and then the offending site is used in the rankings. It is blatant copyright infringement and you can expect to see larger sites taking legal action to protect their turf.

Since the web evolves a breakneck speed, you can expect there to be many more legal areas popping up in 2007. SPAM may very well be one of them given the monumental failure of the CAN-SPAM Act. As to other areas, we will just have to wait and watch.

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