- The First Wave: Utopianism
- The Second Wave: Paranoia
- The Third Wave: Exceptionalism Proliferation
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The Second Wave: Paranoia
Later in the 1990s, the regulatory pendulum swung in the other direction. Regulators still embraced Internet exceptionalism, but instead of favoring the Internet, regulators treated the Internet more harshly than analogous offline activity.
For example, in 2005, a Texas Web site called Live-shot.com announced that it would offer Internet hunting. Paying customers could control, via the Internet, a gun on a game farm. An employee manually monitored the gun and could override the customer's instructions. The Web site gave people who could not otherwise hunt, such as paraplegics, the opportunity to enjoy the hunting experience.
The regulatory reaction to Internet hunting was swift and severe. More than 35 states banned it. California also banned Internet fishing for good measure. However, regulators never explained how Internet hunting is more objectionable than hunting in physical space.
California senator Debra Bowen (now California's secretary of state) criticized Internet hunting because it "isn't hunting; it's an inhumane, over-the-top, pay-per-view video game using live animals for target practice....Shooting live animals over the Internet takes absolutely zero hunting skills, and it ought to be offensive to every legitimate hunter."
Bowen's remarks reflect numerous unexpressed assumptions about the nature of "hunting" and what constitutes fair play. Many have struggled to explain exactly why shooting animals via the Internet is worse than shooting them in physical space. Without that explanation, the response to Internet hunting may be a typical example of adverse Internet exceptionalism.