When the Internet exploded on the scene as a viable commercial medium in the late 1990s, the phrase "everything, all the time," from The Eagles' rock hit Life in the Fast Lane came often to mind. The Internet represented the new "Wild, Wild West" — unbridled and free of significant legal regulation. Those days are gone forever, as the law has been playing catch-up in cyberspace.

For example, unsolicited commercial email, aka "spam," flourished in the absence of regulation. Only after the spam flood threatened to overwhelm the Net itself did spam purveyors face a variety of state-enacted statutes and then a federal law — the Can-Spam Act — forbidding certain practices. The effectiveness of the federal law, which is base don efforts to quell telemarketing calls has been questionable, as I've written before in this space. But the impetus to regulate remains.

Likewise, privacy laws now have been passed at the federal, state and even municipal level to protect consumers' personally identifiable information, especially when it comes to children (The Childrens' Online Privacy Protection Act). Health care (HIPAA) and banking (The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) information has also been targeted for protection as consumers increase their awareness of the ways in which such information might be mishandled or misused.

Intellectual property is also catching up with the times as the courts and government have begun to contend with the Net's increased reach. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been enacted to address copyright infringement and related issues on the Internet, though many protest that the DMCA is far too restrictive. And on a related note, as we all know, the music industry has been quite aggressive in bringing lawsuits against people who download copyrighted music without permission.

These are but a few examples of how the law is intersecting with the Net's practices and values. No doubt, regulation only will increase as politicians are asked to look into a wider variety of problems — and as new situations bring conflicts to light.

Even though such regulation could slow down the commercial growth of the Internet in certain respects, some protections really are merited. Old-timers — the ones who fondly remember the frontier era of the Net's "wild west" past — may worry about the possible chilling effect of some statutes, but the Internet as a whole is too important as a technological tool to be done lasting commercial harm.

Eric Sinrod is a partner in the San Francisco office of Duane Morris (www.duanemorris.com), where he focuses on litigation matters of various types, including information technology disputes. His column appears Wednesdays at USATODAY.com. His Web site is www.sinrodlaw.com, and he can be reached at ejsinrod@duanemorris.com. To receive a weekly e-mail link to Mr. Sinrod's columns, please send an e-mail with the word Subscribe in the Subject line to ejsinrod@duanemorris.com.

Reprinted here with permission from USAToday.com.