Conflict of laws – The “proper law of a tort” and the Internet

The author looks at changes to English conflict of laws in torts in the context of the continued development of the Internet and the relevance of domestic boundaries, with reference to case law from United States and Europe. Article by Fabrizio Marongiu Buonaiuti published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and its Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London

Netlaw

As the Internet becomes increasingly commercialized, the role of national and international laws for regulating the Internet moves to the forefront. The unique nature of conducting business and communicating over the Internet challenges numerous well-established legal principles and standards. Internet law, or NetLaw, deals with the legalities of Internet usage and provides an understanding of how laws interrelate with other aspects of online culture and society. This short tutorial explores the most important legal issues raised by the expanding use of the Internet and provides a general understanding of the concept, benefits and recent developments of NetLaw

A crusade for morality : status politics and Internet filtering legislation

This thesis demonstrates that particular interest groups supporting the limiting and restricting of patron access on Internet tenninals in public libraries is motivated by a desire to maintain their dominant cultural hegemony. These groups, identified in this work as Crusaders are seeking to pass federal legislation that would require that public libraries install Internet filtering software on public terminals or forfeit federal funding provided through the e-rate subsidy. The importance of such a law is not its instrumental value, but its symbolic value. The sociological theory known as status politics supplies the theoretical basis for this thesis. Briefly, status politics argues that laws serve a symbolic function in society. The laws of a society not only apply order to human behavior, but also reflect the values and beliefs of societal culture. Those who have the power to establish laws also have the power to impose their ideological beliefs and values on the general public. Those who have legislative power see their status and prestige reflected in the laws they establish. By applying Kenneth Burke\u27s five elements of dramaturgical analysis to Crusader testimony given in the Communications Decency Act of 1996, the Child Online Protection Act of 1998, and the Children\u27s Internet Protection Act of 1999, the strategies employed on the part of Crusaders to pass such legislation are revealed. This analysis shows the techniques employed by the Crusaders to convince their audience that Internet filtering laws must be established. This thesis shows that Crusader attempts to pass Internet filtering legislation is an example of status politics

Social Norms in Virtual Worlds of Computer Games

Immersing in the virtual world of the Internet, information and communication technologies are changing the human being. In spite of the apparent similarity of on-line and off-line, social laws of their existence are different. According to the analysis of games, based on the violation of the accepted laws of the world off-line, their censoring, as well as the cheating, features of formation and violations of social norms in virtual worlds were formulated. Although the creators of the games have priority in the standardization of the virtual world, society as well as players can have impact on it to reduce the realism. The violation of the prescribed rules by a player is regarded as cheating. And it is subjected to sanctions, but the attitude toward it is ambiguous, sometimes positive. Some rules are formed as a result of the interaction between players

Cross-Border Issues under EU Data Protection Law with regards to Personal Data Protection

We are living in an inter-connected, global digital society where the services of different operating systems are universal in nature, but many Internet activities are still being tackled by national laws and regulations. A long-existing question is which law is applicable in cases of Internet activities because the online world does not have any physical boundaries. How the European Union (EU) approaches this duality has become a concern for data protection laws. By analysing some recent Court of Justice of the European Union case laws, this article seeks to discover how the EU data protection law tackles disputes involving transnational issues online, which includes its extra-territorial application and cross-border data transfers. The article also indicates that there is an enormous gap between legislation and practice.Peer reviewe

The Crime of Cyber Sexual Exploitation of Children: A Comparative Legal Study

With the spread of the use of computers and the Internet, more and more pedophiles have easier access to children . They can literally enter a child’s home and not be detected. Pedophiles can sit at their own computer and stake out their next victim. This increase in the usage of the Internet has led to the increase in sexual exploitation of children on the Internet. Due to this increase in the perpetration of such heinous crimes, more international efforts were exerted to combat such crimes. Many countries around the world also enacted laws to combat cyber crimes in general and sexual exploitation of children on the Internet in particular . Such countries include the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates , and The Sultanate of Oman. As to the remaining Arab countries, no such laws yet exist to combat such crimes. But such crimes are dealt with in these countries by applying existing traditional penal and moral codes. The crime of sexual exploitation of children over the Internet is a serious and heinous crime that harms the society greatly .This paper deals with the crime of cyber sexual exploitation of children over the Internet, and national and international efforts in combating this crime. This paper also discusses relevant comparative laws and legislation

The Internet, Securities Regulation, and Theory of Law

Rarely has a change in the environment affected society as dramatically as the Internet. It has transformed the way we retain, transfer, and exchange information. At minimal cost, the Internet offers us far more information at a faster pace than ever before. It enables us to interact around the globe with more people than at any time in the past. When such dramatic environmental changes occur, drastic changes in the law often follow. 1 The Internet affects the environment in which securities markets operate, and the laws that govern them. 2 The use of the Internet has already begun to change the way information about securities is disseminated and the way in which securities are traded, 3 two activities that are regulated by the securities laws. 4 When the environment changes drastically, the gap between law in action and law on the book, between practice and theory, tends to widen. This Article is aimed at bridging this gap. Should the securities laws be adapted to the use of the Internet? If so, how? What path of inquiry should be taken to answer the questions and how should we think about adapting law to a changing environment of actors and actions subject to law? The main purpose of the Article is to begin this inquiry

The Internet, Securities Regulation, and Theory of Law

Rarely has a change in the environment affected society as dramatically as the Internet. It has transformed the way we retain, transfer, and exchange information. At minimal cost, the Internet offers us far more information at a faster pace than ever before. It enables us to interact around the globe with more people than at any time in the past. When such dramatic environmental changes occur, drastic changes in the law often follow. 1 The Internet affects the environment in which securities markets operate, and the laws that govern them. 2 The use of the Internet has already begun to change the way information about securities is disseminated and the way in which securities are traded, 3 two activities that are regulated by the securities laws. 4 When the environment changes drastically, the gap between law in action and law on the book, between practice and theory, tends to widen. This Article is aimed at bridging this gap. Should the securities laws be adapted to the use of the Internet? If so, how? What path of inquiry should be taken to answer the questions and how should we think about adapting law to a changing environment of actors and actions subject to law? The main purpose of the Article is to begin this inquiry

Scaling laws of human interaction activity

Even though people in our contemporary, technological society are depending on communication, our understanding of the underlying laws of human communicational behavior continues to be poorly understood. Here we investigate the communication patterns in two social Internet communities in search of statistical laws in human interaction activity. This research reveals that human communication networks dynamically follow scaling laws that may also explain the observed trends in economic growth. Specifically, we identify a generalized version of Gibrat's law of social activity expressed as a scaling law between the fluctuations in the number of messages sent by members and their level of activity. Gibrat's law has been essential in understanding economic growth patterns, yet without an underlying general principle for its origin. We attribute this scaling law to long-term correlation patterns in human activity, which surprisingly span from days to the entire period of the available data of more than one year. Further, we provide a mathematical framework that relates the generalized version of Gibrat's law to the long-term correlated dynamics, which suggests that the same underlying mechanism could be the source of Gibrat's law in economics, ranging from large firms, research and development expenditures, gross domestic product of countries, to city population growth. These findings are also of importance for designing communication networks and for the understanding of the dynamics of social systems in which communication plays a role, such as economic markets and political systems.Comment: 20+7 pages, 4+2 figure

An Indian Perspective on the adverse impact of Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) has opened up a new era of computing where by every imaginable object is equipped with, or connected to a smart device allowing data collection and communication through the Internet. The IoT challenges individual privacy in terms of the collection and use of individuals’ personal data. This study assesses the extent to which the IoT has an adverse effects on Indian Society.  A review of various policies and laws formulated and enacted by the Govt. Of India where taken into account and various conclusions were derived based on the analyzed facts. Findings indicate that (1) the Indian policies and Laws pertaining to IoT and cyber issues are not enough to provide stiff opposition to the current pretext of fear and mishappenings and (2) future legislations must consider the implications of global reach of IoT services with respect to its citizen’s well-being