Law Commons^™

The Growing Dark Side Of Cyberspace ( . . . And What To Do About It), Ronald Deibert

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

Cyberspace – the global environment of digital communications – surrounds and embodies us entirely, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We are always on, always connected: emailing, texting, searching, networking, and sharing are all now as commonplace as eating, breathing, and sleeping. But there is a dark side to cyberspace - hidden contests and malicious threats - that is growing like a disease from the inside-out. This disease has many symptoms, and is being reinforced by a multiplicity of disparate but mutually reinforcing causes. Some of these driving forces are unintended byproducts of the new digital universe into …

Cyberterrorism In The Context Of Contemporary International Law, Yaroslav Shiryaev

San Diego International Law Journal

The present Article addressed the legal issues surrounding cyberterrorism. In the first chapter, the author explains why cyberterrorism should be described as “the use of electronic networks taking the form of a cyber-attack to commit a) a substantive act criminalized by the existing legal instruments prohibiting terrorism, or b) an act of terrorism under international customary law.” Further, with a special emphasis on existing anti-terrorism conventions and customary international law, it was demonstrated which actors are likely to engage in acts of cyberterrorism (non-state actors, corporations and individuals), as well as which targets are protected by law and which aims …

Cyberinfants , Cheryl B. Preston

Pepperdine Law Review

Teens have emerged as a significant market segment, especially with respect to online goods and services. This increased market presence is likely to foreground the contract infancy doctrine, which permits a person under age eighteen to void a contract with a few exceptions. This article provides solid foundations for a discussion of where the doctrine fits in the face of a rising youth market and the digital revolution. Part II covers the general parameters of the infancy doctrine and dispels the notion that the doctrine will not be applicable to online services. This part critiques the one case that has …

Walled Gardens Of Privacy Or “Binding Corporate Rules?”: A Critical Look At International Protection Of Online Privacy, Joanna Kulesza

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

A growing concern in the era of cloud computing is protecting Internet users' privacy. This concern is compounded by the fact that there are no effective international solutions. This article considers the latest European Union (EU) proposed development in this area – a regulatory model based on amended Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) – as introduced by the EU Justice Commissioner. These planned changes would have worldwide effects on international companies' online activities in transboundary cyberspace.

After providing a background on the concept of defining privacy in general, the article describes the BCR proposal, and proceeds to consider the likelihood of …

Shaping Preventive Policy In “Cyber War” And Cyber Security: A Pragmatic Approach, Tony Guo

Tony Guo

As the Egyptian government took the country offline—in an effort to squelch public dissent—the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give the President the same emergency powers to shut off “critical” Internet infrastructure in the event of a “cyber emergency.” This bill, along with others like it, has been introduced in light of recent political rhetoric on “cyber war.” The proponents of “cyber war” evoke images of large explosions, poison gas clouds, and a high degree of mortality. In reality, cyber warfare is a misleading metaphor, and has long been confused with crime and espionage. "Cyber war" is not …

Uses And Abuses Of Cyberspace, Andrew D. Murray

Professor Andrew D Murray

No abstract provided.

Building Universal Digital Libraries: An Agenda For Copyright Reform, Hannibal Travis

Pepperdine Law Review

This article proposes a series of copyright reforms to pave the way for digital library projects like Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, and Google Print, which promise to make much of the world's knowledge easily searchable and accessible from anywhere. Existing law frustrates digital library growth and development by granting overlapping, overbroad, and near-perpetual copyrights in books, art, audiovisual works, and digital content. Digital libraries would benefit from an expanded public domain, revitalized fair use doctrine and originality requirement, rationalized systems for copyright registration and transfer, and a new framework for compensating copyright owners for online infringement without imposing derivative …

Piercing Pennoyer With The Sword Of A Thousand Truths: Jurisdictional Issues In The Virtual World, Andrew Cabasso

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Customary Internet-Ional Law: Creating A Body Of Customary Law For Cyberspace, Kam Wai, Warren Bartholomew Chik

Warren Bartholomew Chik

The shift in socio-economic transactions from realspace to cyberspace through the emergence of electronic communications and digital formats has led to a disjuncture between the law and practices relating to electronic transactions. The speed at which information technology has developed require a faster, more reactive and automatic response from the law that is not currently met by the existing law-making framework. This paper suggests the development of special rules to enable Internet custom to form legal norms to fulfill this objective. In Part 1, I will describe the socio-economic problems and stresses that electronic transactions place on existing policy and …

Harassment Through Digital Media: A Cross-Jurisdictional Comparative Analysis On The Law On Cyberstalking, Warren B. Chik

Warren Bartholomew Chik

The cyber world is an extension of the real world. It is another dimension where we can work, study and play. But people also tend to lose their inhibitions on the Internet, often while keeping their anonymity. Because of the perceived and real freedoms in the digital environment, people are emboldened to act in ways that they may not normally do in the real world. One recent phenomenon that is steadily becoming a problem in every country with a high level of electronic connectivity is the act of cyberstalking. The electronic medium is an important factor due to its very …

'Customary Internet-Ional Law': Creating A Body Of Customary Law For Cyberspace. Part 1: Developing Rules For Transitioning Custom Into Law, Warren B. Chik

Warren Bartholomew CHIK

The shift in socio-economic transactions from realspace to cyberspace through the emergence of electronic communications and digital formats has led to a disjuncture between the law and practices relating to electronic transactions. The speed at which information technology has developed require a faster, more reactive and automatic response from the law that is not currently met by the existing law-making framework. This paper suggests the development of special rules to enable Internet custom to form legal norms to fulfill this objective. In Part 1, I will describe the socio-economic problems and stresses that electronic transactions place on existing policy and …

Right To Information Identity, Elad Oreg

Elad Oreg

Inspired by the famous Warren&Brandeis conceptualization of the "right to privacy", this article tries to answer a different modern conceptual lacuna and present the argument for the need to conceptualize and recognize a new, independent legal principle of a "right to information-identity". This is the right of an individual to the functionality of the information platforms that enable others to identify and know him and to remember who and what he is. What was happening regarding privacy in the late 19th century happens now with identity. Changes in technology and social standards make the very notion of identity increasingly fluid, …

Cybercrime, Ronald C. Griffin

Journal Publications

This essay recounts campaigns against privacy; the fortifications erected against them; and hi-jinx attributable to hackers, crackers, and miscreants under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Sexual Harassment 2.0, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

Sexual harassment is a complex and evolving practice. The rise of sexual discrimination in cyberspace is only one of the most recent and most striking examples of the phenomenon's increasing complexity. Sexual harassment law, however, has not kept pace with this evolution. Discrimination law has not been adequately "updated" to address new and amplified practices of sex discrimination. Its two principal limitations are (1) it treats only sexual harassment that occurs in certain protected settings (e.g. the workplace or school) as actionable and (2) it assumes that both the activity and the resulting harm of sexual harassment occur in the …

The Future Of Cybertravel: Legal Implications Of The Evasion Of Geolocation, Marketa Trimble

Scholarly Works

Although the Internet is valued by many of its supporters particularly because it both defies and defeats physical borders, these important attributes are now being exposed to attempts by both governments and private entities to impose territorial limits through blocking or permitting access to content by Internet users based on their geographical location—a territorial partitioning of the Internet. One of these attempts, for example, is the recent Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”) proposal in the United States. This article, as opposed to earlier literature on the topic discussing the possible virtues and methods of erecting borders in cyberspace, focuses on …

The Politics Of Writing, Writing Politics: Virginia Woolf’S A [Virtual] Room Of One’S Own, Tegan Zimmerman

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article revisits A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s foundational 1929 text on women’s writing. I examine from a feminist materialist perspective the relevance of Woolf’s notion of a “room” in our globalized and technological twenty-first century. I first review Woolf’s position on the material conditions necessary for women writers in her own time and then the applicability of her thinking for contemporary women writers on a global scale. I emphasize that the politics of writing, and in particular writing by women, that Woolf puts forth gives feminists the necessary tools to reevaluate and rethink women’s writing both online …

Cyber Security And The Government/ Private Sector Connection, Jeffrey F. Addicott

Faculty Articles

The United States does not possess a sufficient cyber security framework. Over eighty-five percent of the critical infrastructure in the United States is controlled by private industry. The greatest concern is an intentional cyber attack against electronic control systems that regulate thousands of interconnected computers, routers, and switches. The centralized computer networks controlling the U.S. infrastructure presents tempting targets.

Generally, there are four types of cyber attacks. First, the most common, is service disruption—which aims to flood the target computer with data packets or connection requests, thereby making it unavailable to the user. The second type is designed to capture …