The Internet has perhaps changed more in the past five years than it had in the prior twenty years, since the birth of the web. For the first time, more users connect through mobile devices like smart phones and tablets than through laptop and desktop computers. These devices are more personal and produce data that are more sensitive than the legacy PCs they have replaced. They have given rise to many disruptive new business categories from mobile apps to augmented reality to location-based services. They have empowered the Internet of Things, the “quantified self,” and self-driving cars. They have disrupted incumbent powers in markets for operating systems, computing hardware, and social networking services. They raise new problems of scarcity, interoperability, and interference.
These changes have brought about new problems for law. From privacy to antitrust to telecommunications to intellectual property to criminal law, the new Internet may not work like the old. Does mobile represent a fundamental shift or merely a small change from the legacy web? How does the shift from the web to mobile alter old debates about power, intermediaries, regulation, and other topics in Internet and computer law?
Business Meeting a Program Conclusion.