It’s always interesting glancing through a blog new to me. Some reveal what I consider psychosis, such as the blog devoted to proving another blog was engaging in Catholic blasphemy for suggesting that the Pope was blaspheming for … now I forget. Some demonstrate the eternal human need to be right with the Boss Upstairs, without ever wondering if he exists. Others are political, and they run around with their eternal prism before their eyes, interpretation guaranteed and rarely surprising.
Even technical blogs can be interesting. Balkinization, which appears to be devoted to legal issues of some sort, had this bit by Rebecca Crootof which surprised me. I just had to sift through the legal pieces:
Once upon a time, missing a payment on your leased car would be the first of a multi-step negotiation between you and a car dealership, bounded by contract law and consumer protection rules, mediated and ultimately enforced by the government. You might have to pay a late fee, or negotiate a loan deferment, but usually a company would not repossess your car until after two or even three consecutive skipped payments. Today, however, car companies are using starter interrupt devices to remotely “boot” cars just days after a payment is missed. This digital repossession creates an obvious risk of injury when an otherwise operational car doesn’t start: as noted in a New York Times article, there have been reports of parents unable to take children to the emergency room, individuals marooned in dangerous neighborhoods, and cars that were disabled while idling in intersections.
This is but one of many examples of how the proliferating Internet of Things(IoT) enables companies to engage in practices that foreseeably cause consumer property damage and physical injury. But how is tort law relevant, given that these actions are authorized by terms of service and other contracts? In this post I’ll elaborate on how IoT devices empower companies at the expense of consumers and how extant law shields industry from liability.
And while the legal issues are of only minor interest, the alienation we’ll experience as the absolute letter of the contract is enforced is the bigger issue.
I’ve seen this already, as I remember from many, many years ago an old friend of mine recounting his experience with the bank and loans. It used to be, he said, that if you were a day or two late on paying the monthly loan installment, no big deal. But then computers came into use, and now if you were a day late, you were charged up the wazoo for it.
He was livid. And he had a right to be. In the name of enforcing the contract to its absolute letter, the bank was disrupting the societal bonds which are so important in keeping societies functioning smoothly.
So now I’m wondering how much more damage the Internet of Things will be doing to those societal bonds, and if we’ll fragment even moreso.
