From Spam to Stern: Advertising Law and the Internet

PRINCIPLE 1: “OId” law of advertising still applies to the new medium of the Internet.

Despite opinions to the contrary, the Internet is not a brave new frontier where all new law must be created out of whole cloth to meet the new challenges of this new medium. Quite the opposite, courts have said time and time again that when a new medium pops up, they will simply apply old law to it (Sony Corp, v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417:1984).