What's a Primer?

Charles Carreon

Merriam-Webster.com defines a “primer” as “a small introductory book on a subject.” In Spanish, my other first language, “primer” simply means “first.” When I wrote this book, I had both ideas in mind. I wanted to write a small, first book on cyberlaw for laypeople, going easy on legal citations, omitting footnotes, and expressing honest opinions about whose ox is getting gored under the evolving legal cyber-regime. I try to answer the questions people ask me in bars and when they buttonhole me in social situations. Practically everyone comes up with a legal question for me eventually, so now, at least for some questions, I can just tell people to read the Primer and enjoy their drink.

In some areas of cyberlaw, I have direct experience, and I share what I learn on the field of battle, fighting cases for my clients. Sometimes I think I'd like to just spend my time reading and writing, but then I realize that litigation and the occasional trial keeps me aware of which way the wind is blowing out on the cyberfrontier. Because a regime is evolving, and there is precious little grass-roots influence on that evolution. Indeed, a vast cyber-landgrab may well be in process, and just keeping your footing in the midst of that situation will require being well-informed and strategic. In our legal and economic world, information moves at ever-accelerating speed, and plays an ever-more pivotal role in how well we live and how free we are.

Amazingly, the Internet, that silly concept that birthed a thousand dot-bombs, is now casting a shadow across the world, causing the big players to look up and ask themselves what time it is. I remember back in the eighties, reading a column by author Frank Herbert in Bob Guccione's defunct Omni magazine, in which he said you needed to own a personal computer to protect yourself. Well that sure doesn't sound alarmist or weird anymore. How would I even eat without my computer? My family would be in dire straits if the Internet broke. As cyber-citizens, the Internet is literally our lifeline, not only for news, entertainment and communication, but for the actual stream of transactions that we use to make a living.

In Sun Tzu's strategy classic The Art of War, he describes nine types of terrain on which battles are fought. One of them is called “intersecting ground,” because it is surrounded on all sides by competitors, “and would give the first to get it access to all the people on the continent.” The Internet is a resource that will be competed over on into the far future, because it gives access to all of the people in the Internet universe. The Internet will ultimately become wireless, instantaneous, and totally portable, feeding a fundamental expansion in human knowledge and communication.

The Internet is both an economic force and a legal force that is unmaking legal rules and making new ones with a sense of urgency that is fired by the clash of enormous interests. Copyright law is on steroids thanks to the flood of copyright lawsuits filed by the the RIAA and MPAA against their fans. The average citizen is under seige. Their private information may be secretly obtained by the FBI and CIA under the Patriot Act; even Ted Kennedy is on the terrorist no-fly list; and rampant privacy violations at data-banks like Lexis-Nexis and ChoicePoint make you never want to save your credit card information at a website ever again. We need to equip ourselves with knowledge to control our destiny — to even understand where we stand in this decidedly un-brave new world.

I revise the Primer whenever I think some urgent piece of new information demands it, and I can find the time away from representing my clients. Every now and then I'll dig into areas I know nothing about, and try to figure them out. Online gambling, for example, turned out to be much more interesting than I'd thought. A fantastic crossroads of criminal law, too damn much money, international intrigue, and a go-go spirit that simply will not take “no” for an answer. Digging into the issue of identity theft was similarly entertaining — what your government isn't doing to protect your financial privacy should cause you concern. In some areas that are outside of my specialization, like patent law, I try to provide basic information and most importantly, follow the Hippocratic injunction to “do no harm.” Of course, no legal advice book is complete without a disclaimer that it is not providing legal advice, so here goes — this isn't advice!