Jurisdiction and the Internet

This book examines how regulatory competence is allocated over online

activity: which State has the right to regulate which site or online event?

Who can apply their defamation or contract law, their obscenity standards,

gambling or banking regulation, pharmaceutical licensing requirements

or hate speech prohibitions to a site – and enforce these laws?

Traditionally transnational activity has been ‘shared out’ between States

with the aid of location-centric rules and these can be adjusted to suit the

Internet. But can these rules be stretched indefinitely and what are the

costs of squeezing global online activity into nation-state law? This book

offers some uncomfortable insights into one of the most important

debates on Internet governance, and will be of interest to students,

academics, policy makers, legal practitioners and businesses who work

in the field of e-commerce or Internet regulation.



348 pages

Publisher: Cambridge University Press (November 26, 2007)

Language: English