Trends In Information Technology Law: Looking Ahead To 2013

This article looks ahead to what we might expect as IT law developments in 2013. Please see also the PLC service article for 2013 predictions for data protection, privacy, social media, copyright and patents.

Introduction

2012 was the year when the IT changes we're living through, and where they might lead, became much plainer to see. In its 'Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds' report aimed at stimulating thought about possible global trajectories during the next 15 to 20 years published on 10 December, the US National Intelligence Council characterised the role of IT as one of a number of 'game-changers':

"Information technology is entering the big data era. Process power and data storage are becoming almost free; networks and the cloud will provide global access and pervasive services; social media and cybersecurity will be large new markets. This growth and diffusion will present significant challenges for governments and societies, which must find ways to capture the benefits of new IT technologies ..."1

IT changes: (1) - scale

IT law developments next year will continue to follow in the wash of evolution information technology itself, where two key words are scale and nexus.

Just to take mobile and the Internet2:

in 2012 there were 2.5bn Internet users (1/3rd of the 7bn global population) and 1.1bn smartphone users (42% growth in Q4 2012 over Q4 2011 but still only around 1/5th of total mobile phone users); mobile monetisation (apps and advertising) is estimated at $19bn in 2012, up from $0.7bn in 2008. on 23 November 2012 in the USA - 'Black Friday', the day after the Thanksgiving holiday - 24% of all online shopping was from mobiles and tablets; mobile will have grown to 13% of all Internet traffic globally in 2012 and overtook desktop internet usage in India in May 2012. Total Internet traffic continues to grow at a compound rate of around 40% per year and we keep running out of words to express the quantity of global digital data and having to invent new ones: according to IDC, there are now nearly 2 zettabytes (1021 bytes, or 1k exabytes; next up - yottabyte, or 1k zettabytes). The real point is not so much how far we have come, but how far there is still to go. Although we talk routinely now of 'big data', the quantity of digital data is increasing by 50% each year so 'biggest data' is still a long way off.

IT changes: (2) - nexus

If 'scale' is the first keyword for 2013, 'nexus' is the second - the interconnectedness of and interrelationships between the IT worlds of the Cloud, big data, social and mobile, in each of which we're at a similarly early stage with the main developments still to come. It is the potential and growth opportunities of rapidly increasing scale and nexus that set the scene for IT 're-imagining' many areas daily personal and work life over the next few years, and explain the operating systems wars between iOS (Apple), Android (Google) and Windows (Microsoft); the smartphone patent wars, with their twenty or so antagonists; and the strategic squaring up between Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft.

What does this mean for IT lawyers in 2013?

So, what does all this mean for technology lawyers in 2013? At the...