Stanford Center for Internet and Society

The most interesting aspect of cyberspace is not what happens for a time to its visitors. It’s not the absence of regulation nor the presence of perfect regulation; it’s not the staggering variety of content nor the sudden arbitrariness of geography; it’s not the constant threat of surveillance nor the occasional absence of accountability. The most interesting aspect of cyberspace flows from its status as an engine of realization: cyberspace widens the range of what we think of as possible. The Web is home to phenomena that never quite happened before—not because the technology was untenable, but because no one thought to do it. The importance of cyberspace is not what occurs to you when you visit; it’s what occurs to you.

If you’ve visited Google’s physical campus in Mountain View, you likely noticed that the sign in procedure amounts to a click-wrap. Google requires that you accept a non-disclosure agreement, presented on monitors by the front door, before it will print you a visitor pass. It occurred to the Internet giant that it could treat its campus like an Internet service by requiring visitors to click-through a terms of use at the entry portal. This generates a record that you either agreed to play by the rules, or you were trespassing.

This is hardly an isolated example.

This quote belongs to Robin Bienfait, RIM’s Chief Information Office (CIO). RIM makes the BlackBerries, and the title line of this post recites Ms. Bienfait’s answer to the question what information is being recorded on RIM’s internal network (e.g., telephone conversations and email exchange over employees’ devices).

The Stanford Technology Law Review’s symposium is scheduled for February 27th, 2009. According to its website, the symposium will “showcase vibrant legal scholarship on the interplay between new advances in neurotechnology and traditional legal principles and concerns.”