Taking assumptions and flipping them completely

[Crossposted from First Movers. Comments over there.]

This note from the latest Harvard Law Review is exactly the kind of internet law writing I’d like to be able to do- taking something we take almost for granted (cybercrime is bad!) and turning it completely on its head (cybercrime isn’t bad, it is a healthy irritant that improves our security against unanticipated catastrophic security events.) Really interesting article and well worth the read if you’re interested in internet law or looking to see your assumptions challenged.

Unintentionally, this article demonstrates why I’m interested in internet law as an intellectual problem. Because the economics and social dynamics of our online interactions are often so different from our offline experience, our intuitions about what should work there are often very wrong. As a result, understanding those intuitions and attacking and inverting them is still very possible, very productive, and very fun- not settled like it appears to be in other places in the law.

[Image: A Chinese martial artist using his opponent’s energy against him, from the Wikipedia article on Martial Arts.]