Information technology law has also been heavily invested of late in issues such as obviating risks of data breaches and artificial intelligence.
The nature of this utilisation of data and information technology platform is changing heavily with the advent of Artificial Intelligence systems, with major lawfirms in the United States of America, Australia, China, and the United Kingdom reporting pilot programs of Artificial Intelligence programs to assist in practices such as legal research, drafting and document review.
New methods of tapping and surveillance made possible by computers have wildly differing rules on how they may be used by law enforcement bodies and as evidence in court.
Global computer-based communications cut across territorial borders; issues of regulation, jurisdiction and sovereignty have therefore quickly come to the fore in the era of the Internet.
They have been solved pretty quickly as well, because cross-border communication, negotiating or ordering was nothing new; new were the massive amounts of contacts, the possibilities of hiding one's identity and sometime later the colonisation of the terrain by corporations.
An example would be where the contents stored on a server located in the United Kingdom, by a citizen of France, and published on a web site, are legal in one country and illegal in another.
[5] Another view can be read from a wiki-website with the name "An Introduction to Cybersecession",[6] that argues for ethical validation of absolute anonymity on the Internet.
Thus, in the U.S., in 1997, Jake Baker faced criminal charges for his e-conduct, and numerous users of peer-to-peer file-sharing software were subject to civil lawsuits for copyright infringement.
But if the celebrity has ties, economic or otherwise, to England, he or she can sue for libel in the English court system, where the burden of proof for establishing defamation may make the case more favorable to the plaintiff.
Internet governance is a live issue in international fora such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the role of the current US-based co-ordinating body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was discussed in the UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in December 2003.
Instead of identifying as a physical person, Internet citizens will be known by their usernames or email addresses (or, more recently, by their Facebook accounts).
For example, governmental laws may be influenced by greater societal norms, and markets affected by the nature and quality of the code that operates a particular system.
[15] Which includes right such as freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
In comparison to print-based media, the accessibility and relative anonymity of internet has torn down traditional barriers between an individual and his or her ability to publish.
These complexities have taken many forms, three notable examples being the Jake Baker incident, in which the limits of obscene Internet postings were at issue, the controversial distribution of the DeCSS code, and Gutnick v Dow Jones, in which libel laws were considered in the context of online publishing.
The last example was particularly significant because it epitomized the complexities inherent to applying one country's laws (nation-specific by definition) to the internet (international by nature).
In 2003, Jonathan Zittrain considered this issue in his paper, "Be Careful What You Ask For: Reconciling a Global Internet and Local Law".
[16] In the UK in 2006 the case of Keith-Smith v Williams confirmed that existing libel laws applied to internet discussions.
[17] In terms of the tort liability of ISPs and hosts of internet forums, Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act may provide immunity in the United States.
The "Open Net Initiative" by the Harvard University Berkman Klein Center, the University of Toronto and the Canadian SecDev Group[19][20] whose mission statement is "to investigate and challenge state filtration and surveillance practices" to "...generate a credible picture of these practices," has released numerous reports documenting the filtration of internet-speech in various countries.
[citation needed] These examples of filtration bring to light many underlying questions concerning the freedom of speech.
[23] The vitality of this article can be seen today, when examining the USSC decision of Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001) where it is cited by the majority, those in concurrence, and even those in dissent.
[24] The motivation of both authors to write such an article is heavily debated amongst scholars, however, two developments during this time give some insight to the reasons behind it.
First, the sensationalistic press and the concurrent rise and use of "yellow journalism" to promote the sale of newspapers in the time following the Civil War brought privacy to the forefront of the public eye.
Inspired by the Watergate scandal, the United States Congress enacted the Privacy Act of 1974 just four months after the resignation of then President Richard Nixon.
§§ 1801–1811, this act establishes standards and procedures for use of electronic surveillance to collect "foreign intelligence" within the United States.
For more information see: Foreign Intelligence Act The ECPA represents an effort by the United States Congress to modernize federal wiretap law.
The Secretary of Homeland Security must "appoint a senior official to assume primary responsibility for privacy policy."