In 1961 the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association, feeling that the computer will cast its “automated shadow on every phase of society,” conducted a joint three-day seminar in Washington, D.C. Titled “Legal Problems in the Use of Electronic Data Processing in Business, Industry and Law,” the seminar discussed “function and operation of computers and their impact on tort, tax, corporation, labor, contract, banking, sales, antitrust, patent and copyright law, as well as on the law of evidence and trial practice.”
Lawyer Roy Freed of the Philadelphia Bar, in a booklet called “A Lawyer’s Guide Through the Computer Maze,” describes the working of the machine and then poses some challenging legal questions.
What duty does the company acting as a computer service organization have to preserve the confidential nature of the data it processes for its customers?
Can business records placed on magnetic tape be used in evidence, or must the original records be preserved?
How long can corporate management lag behind others in their industry in adopting machine data-processing systems before they expose themselves to a mismanagement charge?
To what extent should the manufacturer of a complex product that has a potential for causing harm try to minimize his liability as a maker by anticipating design defects through simulated operation on the computer?
Other legal experts asked other questions. If an electronically processed check is bounced erroneously, who is responsible? If a noncomputerized railroad has a train wreck, can the road be sued on the premise that the accident would not have occurred with modern traffic controls? Or if the reverse occurs, can an anticomputer claimant win a suit against the machine?
Applications of the computer in patent law may lead to more thorough search in addition to higher speed. This could well clear another bottleneck by issuing fewer and faster patents. But copyright violation problems lie in the possibility of making copies of tapes or other media suitable for the computer’s use. The altering or falsification of computer data also poses a tricky legal problem; there is already a precedent in the Wall Street man who juggled the punched cards on the computer to his own advantage.
Perhaps there was one question none of the lawyers present had the courage to bring up: what if the day comes when the court itself is a computer, and the case is presented to it as a stack of cards, or a prepunched or magnetized tape? Such a mechanized justice was fancifully depicted on a television thriller by Ray Bradbury.