Law Commons^™

Property Rules, Liability Rules, And Immunity: An Application To Cyberspace, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This Article sets out a theory of torts and cyberspace wrongs. My goal is to provide a sparse theoretical account of tort law and apply it to cyberspace torts, both negligent and intentional. I approach this goal by applying the framework of property rules and liability rules to cyberspace torts. That framework suggests that trespass doctrine is appropriate in instances of cyber invasions of private information resources, such as the breaking of codes to access private information on the web. However, trespass doctrine should play no role in cyber-invasions of public information resources, such as the sending of spam email. …