Law and Order in the CYBERSPCE 1 Kaan

“Law and Order” in the CYBERSPCE 1

• Kaan Agartan • Sociology Dept. • agartan@binghamton. edu 2

Law • Body of rules which order and justice is maintained • tool to regulate and control social relations. 3

INTERNET • Uncontrollable? • How different is it from the “real” life? 4

LEGAL FIELD • cyberlaw has not established itself as a new legal paradigm • rejection of an internetspecific legal perception. • fundamental principal of today’s cyberlaw is to apply legal frameworks established prior to the Internet 5

LEGAL FIELD • Why resist to a new paradigm? • law making is a slow process • uncertainty of physical location 6

LEGAL FIELD • How, then, does cyberlaw operate? = ANALOGY: Make the virtual world look like the real world Telephone, library, street corner, park, shopping mall 7

COPYRIGHTS • an exclusive right, a limited monopoly, granted to an author or originator of a work to control how this work is going to be used and distributed • PROBLEM: Copyright protection limits public access to produced works 8

COPYRIGHTS what is new in the Digital World? • eliminate physical constraints on copying and distribution • perfect copies • distribute in a shorter period of time 9

COPYRIGHTS Response from the Legal Field? • Criminalization • Does not provide a space to talk about the changes in the core of production of works 10

COPYRIGHTS Do we need copyrights any more? • Changing economics of production 11

COPYRIGHTS NAPSTER case • File-sharing on a a peer-to-peer distribution network • law suit filed in December 1999 • found guilty of facilitating copyright infringement because of the existence of a central server 12

COPYRIGHTS When Government intervenes? • White Paper in 1995 • “current law should give the copyright owner the control over virtually any reproduction of Internet communications” • BROWSING? ! 13

STATE CONTROL • governments everywhere have rushed to expand their powers of surveillance as they enjoyed the advancements in technology • US Patriot Act 14

STATE CONTROL • Arrest the Russian in US! • Sue the US company in Australia • = states are trying to expand their national jurisdictions beyond their national territories 15

STATE CONTROL • RESULT: Clash of Jurisdictions! • Decreasing power of individual states due to the global character of the Internet • This circumscribes courts’ and governments’ power to impose national jurisdictions on the Internet 16

STATE CONTROL • Do they give up? • ACT GLOBAL! • ICANN 17

STATE CONTROL • Internet remains a continuous field of contestation between the individual and the state • Law and legal field determine the future of this contestation 18