Cyber law

Cyber law is a term used to encompass the legal issues and disparate bodies
of law which are engaged by the Internet. These include intellectual
property law, the law concerning privacy and freedom of expression, as well
as many policy and regulatory issues, and the immense problems of
international jurisdiction online. Anonymity and pseudonymity make it
essentially impossible to link participants using these technologies on the
internet with real physical identities and locations.

For those years, the technologies play a leading role in the information
society. Given that, some people think the regulators should catch up with
the radical changes in the society.

However, some think the Internet should not (or can not) be regulated
because there is a technology cycle. The legal issues which surrounded
Napster are one of the most well known examples of cyber law. The problem
when we try to regulate cyberspace is the lack of profound experience in the society.

Information infrastructure, the Internet, consists of three layers (physical
infrastructure, digital technology services and applications of digital
technology) and in each of these layers digital technology is involved. New
businesses, copyright issues and other problems will arise in the context of
each of these three levels and solutions to cope with them will also have an
impact on the other levels. Very complex system will need to be dealt with
and there will be a risk of undesired side effects in other layers of the
information structure (e.g. when changing the legislative framework).

Some technologies may helps the laws to work such as digital watermarking,
but it is unlikely that they will provide real solutions.

Such laws in the United States include:

   * Communications Decency Act - the controversial pornography regulation
     law, later struck down as unconstitutional
   * Digital Millennium Copyright Act - the epidemic law that outlaws not
     only software piracy but also the activities that help it.