ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that H. A. L. Hart’s rule model seem badly out of touch with the use of modern technologies as regulatory instruments and with the pervasive use of ‘technological management’ in place of what Hart terms the ‘primary’ rules. Distinctively, technological management seeks to design out harmful options or to design in protections against harmful acts. In addition to the cars and carts, a well-known example of the strategy in relation to products is so-called digital rights management, this being employed with a view to the protection, or possibly extension, of Intellectual property rights. The extent that the activities of the joy-riders were already rendered ‘illegal’ by the criminal law, the added value of the use of technological management was to render those illegal acts ‘impossible’. If technological management malfunctions in ways that lead to personal injury, damage to property and significant inconvenience, this will damage trust.
