Liability Rules in the Internet of Things: Why Traditional Legal Relations Encourage Modern Technological Innovation

To most experts on cyberspace, the Internet of Things (IoT) is an arena in which novel legal solutions are likely to prove dominant. I take the opposite position, even though—or perhaps precisely because—I have never done much specific work in this area. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I think that any lack of specialized knowledge offers hidden advantages in working through the basic problems at a high enough level of generality to facilitate setting up a comprehensive liability regime even—perhaps especially—in an area undergoing rapid technological change.