Internet Exceptionalism

Inform IT has published an online article by Eric Goldman, Assistant Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law and Director of the school's High Tech Law Institute, entitled The Third Wave of Internet Exceptionalism . In it he discusses "internet exceptionalism", internet-specific laws that diverge from regulatory precedents in other media. In 1996, a judge called the Internet "a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication." Predicated on this perceived novelty, regulators have enacted many Internet-specific laws that Although Internet exceptionalism can be appropriate, it also can produce bad regulation when the Internet's differences are overstated. sense.