> The issue with that is not that innovation is being stiffled though, it's rather an issue of privacy.
Encryption was an innovation. Communication that's private as a matter of technology rather than as a matter of legislation is an innovation.
Along the same lines: recording and time-shifting video and audio was an innovation. Enshrining the state of copyright law at the time would have prohibited it.
Innovation often does things that existing developers, users, and regulators didn't anticipate.
> For instance, there's nothing in that sort of regulation that prohibits any innovation on encryption that would reconcile the user's reasonable expectation of privacy with the authorities' wish to have access to the user's communications.
There's nothing in that sort of regulation that prohibits perpetual motion machines or time travel, either. The resolution of those two expectations is that one side loses and the other wins; the only question is which.
Encryption was an innovation. Communication that's private as a matter of technology rather than as a matter of legislation is an innovation.
Along the same lines: recording and time-shifting video and audio was an innovation. Enshrining the state of copyright law at the time would have prohibited it.
Innovation often does things that existing developers, users, and regulators didn't anticipate.
> For instance, there's nothing in that sort of regulation that prohibits any innovation on encryption that would reconcile the user's reasonable expectation of privacy with the authorities' wish to have access to the user's communications.
There's nothing in that sort of regulation that prohibits perpetual motion machines or time travel, either. The resolution of those two expectations is that one side loses and the other wins; the only question is which.