LAW AND disORDER IN INTERNET REGULATION

On September 23, I attended a research colloquium organized by The School of Library and Information Studies. The talk, entitled “Social Networking on the Internet & the Law”, was given by Cameron Hutchison who is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law at U of A.

The title of the lecture implied a focus on ways to regulating the activity of social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, but the actual lecture encompassed a broader area of subjects, like cyberbullying, copyright law, jurisdiction on the Internet, and privacy.

The speaker opened his talk with a brief review of the Lori Drew case and used it to argue in favour of legislative measures to cover the legal “terra incognita” in which most of the Internet based activities take place. He proceeded to referring to the legal act that currently governs Internet in Canada, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and its failing to foresee and provide an adequate legal response to the variety of Internet infractions that commonly occur.

The speaker continued by listing some of the solutions that could counteract this legal gap. The most accessible is appealing to Common Law when statutory law in the particular matter that is being judged is missing or incomplete. The disadvantage of this method, in Hutchinson’s opinion, is that not always precedent court decisions are relevant to new Internet-based infractions. The more effective solution would be the adoption of international statutes, which he argued would be more effective if they were created having in mind a dynamic purposive interpretation of the law. In other words, international Internet legislation should be worded in a broader manner that would allow judges and other ruling forums to abide by the spirit more that by the letter of the law in their decision-making process.

To the end of his lecture, the speaker offered the example of the dispute whether the digital download should be taxed or not and raised the question of what happens with someone’s on-line intellectual property in case of death to support his argument that law can be adapted to the Internet on two conditions: that the language of the document is broad enough and that the intent of a legal decision is to conform to the purpose behind the rule, more than to the form of the legal document that contains it.

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The reason for which I attended this lecture is that the subject of Internet-related crimes is increasingly present in the media. From relatively minor infringements of rights, like the recent Kindle copyright infringement scandal, to more serious ones, like Facebook’s compliance or lack thereof with Canadian privacy law, the need for comprehensive Internet legislation becomes clearer every day.

I myself have never seen it clearer than two weeks after attending this lecture, when I watched a CBC documentary about Nadia Kajouji, a Canadian student who killed herself at the instigation of an American middle-aged nurse and family-man, William Melchert-Dinkel. The man in question is now suspected of having encouraged eight people to commit suicide, and the legalities of the case, like the question of jurisdiction for example, seem endless at this point.

Stories like this one make the Lori Drew case look like an ill-fated child’s prank and raise some very disturbing questions: Is Internet today the Wild West of times passed in what law enforcement is concerned? Do we have any viable methods of preventing stories like Nadia’s from repeating? How could we control the currents and flows in the ocean of information that Internet has become?

I am confident that solutions will be found eventually – after all, necessity is the mother of invention. However, it remains to be seen if it will be soon enough for all.

References:

Steinhauer, J. (2008, November 27). Verdict in MySpace Suicide Case. New York Times, A25. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/us/27myspace.html?_r=2&hp

Picker, R. (2009, July 18). The Kindle Fiasco? The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog. Retrieved November 25, 2009, from http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2009/07/the-kindle-fiasco.html

Sites of interest for the topic:

http://www.pipedainfo.com/ (PIPEDA)

http://www.priv.gc.ca/media/nr-c/2009/nr-c_090716_e.cfm (Facebook’ clash with the Privacy Commissioner in Canada)

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2009-2010/death_online/ (suicide of Nadia Kajouji)