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The Law Can’t Keep Up With Technology…and That’s a Very Good Thing

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday November 03 2015, @03:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the a-victory-for-the-people dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Today, thanks to political gridlock in the U.S., lawmakers respond to innovations with all the speed of continental drift. As government gets slower, tech is going the opposite way. New technologies spread instantly by cloud-based apps and social networks, and take hold with almost no legal oversight. Then, by the time government can act, it's usually too late to wind things back to the way they were.

And this, as it turns out, is terrific for tech startups, especially those aimed at demolishing creaky old norms—like taxis, or flight paths over crowded airspace, or money. Lately, the law vs. tech gap is making headlines as it upends the rules around sports gambling. The daily fantasy sports sites FanDuel and DraftKings are showing how fast technology can exploit the gap and put government on its heels.

This problem is as old as law itself. From thrown rocks to spears, bow and arrow to guns, agricultural to industrial economies, government has always had this problem.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2015, @04:00AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2015, @04:00AM (#257806)
    Here's a profile from that time: Henry Clay Frick [wikipedia.org], founder of a coke (coal-derived fuel) manufacturing company, chairman of Carnegie Steel, and labeled "The Most Hated Man in America" (and probably the origin of the tamed-down expletive "Frickin'").

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2015, @04:13AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2015, @04:13AM (#257809)

    Yeah, the parallel to many of today's software billionaires like Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, and Steve Jobs is pretty easy. Bill Gates actually studied biographies of the 19th century robber barons, as well as Napolean, when he was a kid attending Lakeside prep school.