Bits, Bytes, and Bridles: When Old Law Meets New Tech
Reflecting on the “Law of the Horse” debate in today’s context
As contemporary antitrust skirmishes with tech giants like Alphabet and Amazon escalate, and as the brave new world of generative AI casts fresh questions on copyright and fair use, we are reminded of a curious legal analogy from the nascent days of the web: the “Law of the Horse.”
In the mid-90s, as the Internet was evolving from a specialized tool for academics and researchers to a public commodity, regulators grappled with how to approach this new medium. Enter Judge Frank Easterbrook’s 1996 analogy; he argued that just as one would not specifically study the “Law of the Horse” for laws related to horses, it would be unwise to create a separate category of law just for the Internet.¹ Instead, he suggested that legal issues related to the Internet should be dealt with within the existing frameworks of contract law, copyright law, criminal law, and so on.² Easterbrook’s perspective was less a dismissal of the Internet’s significance and more a testament to his faith in the robustness of established legal paradigms.
Yet, throughout history, laws have often evolved in response to transformative technologies. Gutenberg’s printing press of the 15th century did not merely churn out books; it set the…
