Introduction.

• Author: Granick, Jennifer

This issue of the Stanford Law and Policy Review contains five insightful articles about proposed government regulation of different new technologies. Individually, each article describes how regulation of a particular new development, whether digital or medical, comports with the values and desires of the public and proposes a way that individual interests could be better enshrined in public policy.

As a set, the five articles reveal an underlying consensus: what the public wants is what the public should have, with only narrow exceptions in the case of medical safety and the rare market failure. The market is the morality.

In the opening article of this issue, Congressman Rick Boucher details an onslaught of legislative proposals from a media industry intent on strengthening its bargaining position vis-a-vis consumer electronics manufacturers. (1) In short, Big Content wants to control the features Big Devices build into their products, and customer fair use rights are collateral damage. As a thirteen term U.S. Representative for Southern Virginia and member of the House Judiciary Committee's Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee, Boucher has a front row seat for this battle of the titans.

Luckily for consumers, the consumer electronics trade groups are a powerful opposition to the copyright industries, and the manufacturers want to give culture lovers gadgets with all the bells and whistles. This power player is standing up for customer freedom, for fair use, and for a certain kind of innovation, though they do so out of self-interest, rather than out of a sense of the inherent public value in fair use and freedom to create. There is a choice here, between security and control for the copyright owners and freedom, risk, and innovation for the consumer. Congressman Boucher shows that in the balance between copyright, creativity, and public access, the technological future that the public imagines is brighter than the one that the copyright owners would grant.

Steven Goldberg's article looks at innovation in a different field--biotechnology--and asks whether unregulated public access to untested medical procedures is appropriate. (2) Against a background of regulation in which new medical risks are subject to detailed study and heavy regulation, Goldberg points to several signs of a more libertarian approach to policy. The public craves the benefits of scientific and medical innovation and often is willing to incur new health risks in the hopes of curing current medical problems.

Unlike Congressman Boucher, Goldberg sees consumer...