In general, "cyberlaw" typically encompasses all the cases, statutes, and constitutional provisions that impact persons and institutions who control the entry to cyberspace, provide access to cyberspace, create the hardware and software which enable people to access cyberspace, or use their own computers to go "online" and enter cyberspace.
As an academic category or a practitioner classification, cyberlaw is sometimes known as information law, and certain cyberlaw disputes occasionally can be viewed as falling within the areas of multimedia law or telecommunications law.
Some of the key players in cyberlaw disputes thus may include phone companies, federal regulatory agencies, personal computer companies, software companies, major online services (e.g. America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy), Internet service providers (e.g. Delphi, NETCOM, PSINet), K-12 schools, colleges and universities, all persons and companies that have established a presence on the Internet, and those who -- in increasingly large numbers -- are becoming Net Surfers or "Netizens."
Currently, cyberlaw is a wide-open area of the law, with much uncharted territory and many unresolved questions. Only a handful of cases are directly on point, and major statutory schemes are not yet on the books. Attorneys and policy makers currently look to analogous cases and statutes, with many people questioning the efficacy of applying arguably outmoded law to a new digital environment.
An important feature of cyberlaw is its international nature and scope. Cyberspace is an international medium, and the Internet is a completely global entity. The World Wide Web, for example, enables persons to move seamlessly and effortlessly from a "web site" in the U.S. to a web site in Asia. Proverbial net surfers can literally bounce around from France to Tanzania to Peru to Iceland with the click of a mouse. Electronic mail (e-mail) can be sent overseas as easily as it can be sent to the person next door.
And the path a person takes as she or he travels through cyberspace is never predictable. A person's Internet connection may take him or her through Canada or Mexico, for example, en route from Los Angeles to Denver. Or an e-mail message from San Francisco to Jerusalem may travel through computers in Italy and Turkey in one direction, while the response may bounce up through Russia, down to Egypt, across to Brazil, and then back to the Bay Area.
There is typically no way to predict which international borders will be crossed. Indeed, in cyberspace, international borders have been significantly blurred.
As disputes arise and the area of law evolves, seven distinct components of Cyberspace Law have emerged: jurisdiction and related issues; freedom of expression; intellectual property; privacy protection; safety concerns; equal access, and electronic commerce.
Given the national and international nature of the Internet, jurisdiction in cyberlaw can be a key issue. Academics and practitioners are now beginning to analyze just exactly which laws might be applicable in cyberspace at any particular moment in time. Basic principles of federalism, conflicts, and international law may be implicated.
An unresolved question, for example, is whether a particular communication in cyberspace is controlled by the laws of the country where the transmission originated, the laws where an Internet service provider is located (which may indeed be a different country), the laws where the item is accessed, or in fact all of the above.
Freedom of expression has emerged as a major area of controversy in cyberlaw. The range of free speech issues that have arisen include anonymity, accountability, defamation, discriminatory harassment, obscenity, pornography, liability of online services and Internet providers, and the legal responsibilities of educational institutions. The U.S. Congress is now literally wrestling with the applicability of free speech principles as federal lawmakers seek to hammer out a telecommunications reform bill that would control the level of "decency" in cyberspace.
Members of the legal community have also been examining the extent to which traditional intellectual property principles still apply in cyberspace. While patent, trademark, and trade secret law are occasionally relevant, it is the area of copyright law that continues to receive the most attention.
The ease with which documents and graphic materials may be transferred in cyberspace raises novel questions. On the World Wide Web, for example, articles, pictures, and indeed entire books that are accessed while "net surfing" can be saved on the surfer's hard disk, printed out on the surfer's printer, and/or disseminated by e-mail to persons all over the world by simply pushing a few buttons.
Privacy in cyberspace -- or lack thereof -- is another area that has received a great deal of attention, reflecting the ongoing concern in U.S. society as a whole regarding the parameters of the right to privacy under constitutional law, federal and state statute, and traditional tort case law. It has become clear that communication in cyberspace in not completely private. E-mail messages, for example, can be retrieved even if they have not been saved by either the sender or the receiver.
To protect themselves, some persons and companies now rely on encryption. But the federal government has been seeking for several years now to ensure access to encrypted messages through the establishment of escrowed encryption standards, which would essentially give federal authorities a pass-key to all online communication if circumstances warrant such an intrusion.
In the area of safety, controversies focus on "cybercrime," including the efforts of law enforcement officials to stop hackers, child pornography, "cyberstalking," and "cybertheft." A great deal of new legislation has recently been proposed in this area, and issues of morality continue to be at the forefront.
Equity is an interesting area that has only recently garnered the attention of commentators. While some observers focus generally on the nature and extent of the right to receive information, others argue that equal access to cyberspace is particularly essential for America's public school children.
As more and more people begin to conduct business on the Internet, electronic commerce has emerged as a fascinating new area of inquiry. This focus on commercial transactions in cyberspace includes an examination of electronic contracts in light of common law contract principles and the Uniform Commercial Code. Academics and policy makers are also paying a good deal of attention to the implications of transferring money and even property through cyberspace.
This year promises to be a turning point in cyberspace law and policy. The Internet as a whole has now been expanding at a rate of 200% annually for a decade. In recent months, the World Wide Web has been doubling in size every 53 days. Thousands of new web sites are created and posted each week. Nearly a third of web users have been online for less than six months.
Business forecasters predict that American households will purchase more home computers than televisions this year. Given this rate of growth and change, the legal community must inevitably become increasingly involved in cyberspace. Legislation will be proposed, lawsuits will be filed, and important precedent will begin to emerge.
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