"This is how the internet and the tech industry in general have worked."
Well I don't think that IBM, Sun, Nvidia, Oracle, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sandisk, Cisco, Ebay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, Snapchat, Wechat, Instagram, Pinterest, fall into that category.
AirBnB, Uber, some weed companies ... DraftKings, Kik, Telegram ... I suppose fall into that.
But 'hotel permits' and 'cab permits' are in another league altogether from 'selling drugs / gambling' or 'unregulated securities', so I think ABnB and Uber really are in a middle category.
Selling 'classically licentious stuff' like porn, drugs, gambling - and also selling financial scams - these things are as old as time ... and there's good reason we regulate it, even if we don't always agree on the thin red line (i.e. should weed or prostitution be illegal?).
That doesn't leave to many real companies skirting regular law and waiting for regulation to catch up.
ICO's I think are a special case.
The one's the SEC has said are 'cool' are basically the token-only one's and I think they are all de-facto scams, to the extent I highly doubt any of those tokens will be viable.
The SEC is missing one thing - and that is the speculative nature of the coins and that they are not bought up front as 'currencies to do stuff'. No - they are bought with the hope of massive increase in valuation of the currency, thereby making them more like securities than currencies. Or rather, they are 'financial options on some future currency'. In which case, I think they need to be regulated, at least lightly, or at least in some basic way, i.e. requiring minimum amounts of transparency, at very least the executives have to register with the CEO and can go to jail if they just run off with the money willy nilly, which it seems they can do today ...
> Well I don't think that IBM, Sun, Nvidia, Oracle, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sandisk, Cisco, Ebay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, Snapchat, Wechat, Instagram, Pinterest, fall into that category.
I don't think you're right about that. Congress waited to pass laws about software patentability. They waited to hold Craigslist accountable for potentially illegal ads on their site. They took a conservative approach in applying things like libel laws to the likes of spam filters, to Wikipedia and social networking. Instagram and Pinterest definitely skirt the law when it comes to copyright violations and they could have easily ruled early on that if you publish something on your website, you're responsible for the legality of that content. YouTube (not that you mentioned it) grew out of illegally hosting copyrighted material before they learned to play nice with the big corporations by implementing contentID and the like. The government could well have regulated these websites like they did with television: banning the use of profane language or sexual content. You severely underestimate the wild west that a lot of these companies were operating under. Hardware, fine, but I don't know of what regulations a person might want to place on them to begin with.
Except that none of those situations you suggest indicate 'laws catching up to the internet' - except in the case of Craiglist prostitution ads which is within the special case group I noted.
None of those companies were broadly breaking any rules to the point of fundamental ambiguity wherein 'we all waited to see what was going to happen'. I see your point about Pinterest but it wasn't really an existential issue, really.
And none of said companies faced existential issues or angst awaiting legal clarity on anything really.
> None of those companies were broadly breaking any rules to the point of fundamental ambiguity wherein 'we all waited to see what was going to happen'. I see your point about Pinterest but it wasn't really an existential issue, really.
Huh? It's absolutely an existential issue. Pinterest's entire business is built on unauthorised use of content from other websites.
Early on there were some question marks ... but really it's not really a problem, there will be no legislation regarding it, and nothing really will come of it in the end.
I'd argue that at least Ebay falls into that category. Lots of scams are being pulled there, e.g. fake Nvidia GPUs with hacked firmware to appear as higher end models, or power banks and batteries which claim to have 10 to 100 times more capacity than they actually have:
Ebay could proactively fight those scams or at least remove the fraudulent offers after they've been reported, but they do nothing and profit from it instead.
Hopefully, laws will eventually adapt, but until then, there's a lot of money to be made from unsuspecting customers.
Well I don't think that IBM, Sun, Nvidia, Oracle, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sandisk, Cisco, Ebay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, Snapchat, Wechat, Instagram, Pinterest, fall into that category.
AirBnB, Uber, some weed companies ... DraftKings, Kik, Telegram ... I suppose fall into that.
But 'hotel permits' and 'cab permits' are in another league altogether from 'selling drugs / gambling' or 'unregulated securities', so I think ABnB and Uber really are in a middle category.
Selling 'classically licentious stuff' like porn, drugs, gambling - and also selling financial scams - these things are as old as time ... and there's good reason we regulate it, even if we don't always agree on the thin red line (i.e. should weed or prostitution be illegal?).
That doesn't leave to many real companies skirting regular law and waiting for regulation to catch up.
ICO's I think are a special case.
The one's the SEC has said are 'cool' are basically the token-only one's and I think they are all de-facto scams, to the extent I highly doubt any of those tokens will be viable.
The SEC is missing one thing - and that is the speculative nature of the coins and that they are not bought up front as 'currencies to do stuff'. No - they are bought with the hope of massive increase in valuation of the currency, thereby making them more like securities than currencies. Or rather, they are 'financial options on some future currency'. In which case, I think they need to be regulated, at least lightly, or at least in some basic way, i.e. requiring minimum amounts of transparency, at very least the executives have to register with the CEO and can go to jail if they just run off with the money willy nilly, which it seems they can do today ...