Legal aspects in AmI space

Intelligent environments may or may not change law as we know it. It all is a matter of perspective: are intelligent environments to be perceived as abstract, visionary notions that perhaps assist the creation of new products or even conditions, but which shall ultimately be incorporated in the known, real-world reality? Or do they themselves constitute a reality, in which human beings shall unavoidably live? If intelligent environments are perceived as the successors of the information society, they could ultimately challenge legal concepts and axioms upon which the legal science has been built for the last 2.000 years: notions at the hard core of law (individual, ownership, action, accountability, etc.) may substantially change in AmI spaces. Nevertheless, it is claimed that it is not the law´s mission to guide in visionary quests, but rather to settle conflicting interests when these do begin to be noted. Intelligent environments do not yet seem to be in the position to provide the law with adequate incentive to act. Until a social need indeed emerges, intelligent environments should be left alone in order to grow, observing however three basic development-assisting principles: definitional clarity, guaranteed level of protection, and retrospective compatibility