Cyber law

Cyber law is a term used to encompass the legal issues and disparate bodies of law which are engaged by the Internet. These include intellectual property law, the law concerning privacy and freedom of expression, as well as many policy and regulatory issues, and the immense problems of international jurisdiction online. Anonymity and pseudonymity make it essentially impossible to link participants using these technologies on the internet with real physical identities and locations.

For those years, the technologies play a leading role in the information society. Given that, some people think the regulators should catch up with the radical changes in the society.

However, some think the Internet should not (or can not) be regulated because there is a technology cycle[?]. The legal issues which surrounded Napster are one of the most well known examples of cyber law. The problem when we try to regulate cyberspace is the lack of profound experience in the society.

Information infrastructure[?], the Internet, consists of three layers (physical infrastructure, digital technology services and applications of digital technology) and in each of these layers digital technology is involved. New businesses, copyright issues and other problems will arise in the context of each of these three levels and solutions to cope with them will also have an impact on the other levels. Very complex system will need to be dealt with and there will be a risk of undesired side effects in other layers of the information structure (e.g. when changing the legislative framework).

Some technologies may helps the laws to work such as digital watermarking, but it is unlikely that they will provide real solutions.

Such laws include:

• Communications Decency Act - the controversial pronography regulation law.
• Digital Millennium Copyright Act - the epidemic law that outlaws not only software piracy but also the activities that help it.

See also Copyright protection, Gutnick v. Dow Jones

Further readings

The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig

Intellectual Property and the Internet[?] by Rodney D. Ryder; Lexis Nexis Butterworths, 2002[?]

Credit

Internet and Copyright in Japan (http://akira.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/andreas/english_paper_gaidai) by Andreas Bovens[?]

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