The anonymous nature of the Internet allows many people who would not normally watch porn to snoop in and see what the ruckus all about is. Even before the invention of the World Wide Web, porn material used to be distributed by means of the newsgroups. At that time, copyrights were ignored and any available material was posted without inhibition. Then the Web got invented, the Internet bloomed and suddenly even web pages providing free content could earn money.

Most of the Internet law pertaining to the pornography is actually directly derived from existing laws. Copyright infringement, privacy violations, protection of minors, they all exist in regular law, only they were extended to meet the requirements of the new media and distribution means. But some specific cases related to the internet started to arise, so new approaches had to be developed in order to properly enforce the Internet law on pornography.

To better explain the situation, here are some examples. In the virtual world “Second Life”, which started out as an online game and developed into a whole new virtual existence, there are no limits what a virtual character can do, just like in real life. The virtual human then can do all kind of things, including the nasty ones like engaging in unsafe sex, buying a prostitute and even preying on children. Such virtual pedophiles were classified by psychologists as predators who are not yet ready to attack and entrap real children and are using the virtual world to work up the nerve. Such cases raised the question who programmed the sheer possibility, but more importantly, how to stop such a predator to transfer from the virtual into the real world? The child protection specialists who were already working on predators using chat rooms to get in contact with underage victims, extended their operations to this new medium and posed as underage children in relevant areas to see if the predator tries to persuade them to meet in real life. Through IP and routing logs, real underage customers of “Second Life” were tracked down and the parents were notified. In some weird cases, grown men and women were identified as children looking for sex with adults. Such people were warned and are being monitored by the Internet watchdogs.

Nowadays, there is a Journal of Internet Law being published monthly, with twelve issues per year, in a paperback format with the list price of almost five hundred dollars. The authors are David B. Rockower and Mark Radcliffe. David B. Rockower is a Californian lawyer and Mark Radcliffe, a lawyer from Silicon Valley. Their journal is deemed the ultimate resource on current Internet law issues and is available only in subscription, featuring plenty of information.

Issues handled by the journal are civil liberties in cyberspace, online commerce, trading of securities over the net, electronic money, defamation online, protecting of online published material and enforcing American law in the virtual world where no borders exist. They analyze all relevant cases, comment on recent and pertinent legislation, on trends in internet legal issues and some general and business issues, mainly related to the Net are being handled as well.

Although many of the cases and issues handled are very interesting and significant, but the main problem here is that the view of the journal depicts the almost imperialistic and ignorant view of America basing the relevance of American law to the whole of the Internet, forgetting thereby that America is actually just a miniscule and therefore apparently highly irrelevant factor in the information highway. Most of the servers, routers, switchers and personal computers are, when viewed by numbers, are not located in the US, but because the Internet (not the Web, a Brit invented that) was invented by the US, many monopolistic controlling mechanisms are still in the hands of the American legislature.

The European Union has their own laws regulating the Internet, the BSA and the IFPI are worldwide organizations, the majority of inhabitants and Internet users and businesses are beyond United States jurisdiction. These facts render this journal with the relatively limited view of worldwide legal issues almost irrelevant beyond US borders, therefore it is not being offered through European sales channels. Besides the constant bickering pertaining to the jurisdiction of international law disputes related to the Internet, this seems to be the other big display of an apparent power struggle between the US, almost ignorant of the whole world and the European Union, clearly taking over as the next main global economic powerhouse.

Lately the Internet is increasingly becoming the playground for various cyber-harassing and cyber-stalking individuals, employing the new technology to harass, stalk, annoy, threaten and abuse their victims. The number of incidents is rising and many cyber crime task forces now employ professionals to handle such cases of cyber offences. Since that harassment and stalking are not new crimes, just translated transgressions to the virtual world, the existing laws are being reworked to cover these new developments.

The “Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005″ incorporates a little section which is meant to address cyber-stalking and other forms of harassment happening online, whereby the existing laws have been extended to cover the Internet and VoIP harassment and stalking offences. There were heated discussions regarding the wording of the law, moreover the word “annoy”, which can be interpreted in just too many ways, would give an open invitation to frivolous lawsuits. But the other parts of the same paragraph limit the use to “intentionally” and “hiding your identity”, which means if the woman you are addressing knows who you are, you still may curse her out. This does not mean she will not sue you, but the possibility existed before this law was implemented anyway.

In Europe, most prominently in the EU, there is an applicable law for telecommunications covering such occurrences already in place, whereby the harassment over the telephone and cyber-harassment are similarly handled. Like in so many other instances, there is no actual Internet law, but provisions of existing jurisprudence have been extended to provide coverage to new kinds of harassment, resulting in a de facto Internet harassing law.

In future, if an individual hides his identity and frequents to harass another individual by means of the Internet, not only is this person prone to court procedures, but also may be charged with misdemeanor and felony charges by a District Attorney and be subject to investigation by authorities. Under the new proposed law in Missouri, if an adult harasses a minor over the Internet intentionally and hiding his or her identity, then this individual can be charged with a felony.

While the Internet addiction is still being disputed as a disorder or addiction, some apparent sufferers use the terminology and the current state of indecision to litigate their cases in court. A plaintiff disputes the termination by IBM due to his Internet addiction caused by the post traumatic stress disorder. While he based the case on a medically acknowledged disorder, the incorporation of the Internet addiction makes this case interesting. A ruling is still pending.

Harvard University established a Computer Addiction Study Center which came to the conclusion that every ten to twenty people who surf the Web develop a Web dependency.

The Center for Internet Behaviour released a study where they argue that certain services available on the Internet display characteristics which provoke dissociation and the need for instant gratification, whereby they rather would call it compulsion than addiction.

The actual addiction to Internet can establish no case law, because it has not widely been recognized as such. But many psychiatrists now argue that the behaviour commonly called Internet addiction may be just a symptom of other serious disorders, where pathological gambling, impulse control disorders, depression and anxiety manifest themselves by the sufferer seeking gratification by use of the Internet. Under this definition, shopaholics, particularly through a manic phase, tend to shop obsessively; it is only coincidental that it happens over the Internet. A pathological gambler, if he is using the Internet for his obsession, or perhaps this fixation manifests itself in compulsive day trading, it is not Internet induced, but would have manifested itself in some other way eventually.

China, by employing the diagnostic criteria established by Dr. Goldberg, concluded that one eighth of its adolescent population is Internet addicted and restricted the use of computer gaming by declaring a low limiting it to three hours daily.

By many the television addiction was viewed as far worse and that computer and Internet addiction fades with passing time. The legislature has as of yet no juristic measures to define Internet addiction in one way or another, any laws governing the overly use of the Internet do not exist and are not likely to be implemented any time soon.

First of all, there is no Internet law per se. It is impossible to make your Web site “bulletproof” like some advertisers claim, by simply subjugate your site to an Internet law that actually does not exist. Internet follows laws of the country where your Web site is being hosted; therefore the applicable law would be the local law regulating that country’s telecommunication and internet jurisprudence. Is this Internet law compliance set a scam?

Not quite. If you are running a e-business, a community forum, a bulletin board, a Web site, or have Internet presence in some other way, perhaps as a blog, then the site where the whole stuff is located needs to have somewhere a link to the terms of use, terms of service, disclaimer, privacy policy and similar legal mumbo jumbo. Why? There are 50% of all worlds’ lawyers sitting in the United States, which prides itself of inventing the Internet (only partially true, the World Wide Web was invented by a Brit) and these lawyers don’t have enough to do. Ambulance chasers, slimy neighborhood brawl litigators, the guys you see in these ridiculous TV commercials, like “Have you been in a car accident?” guys, together with the people who actually hire them, they just look for the opportunity to sue someone. If you run an e-commerce Web site and don’t have the necessary legal paperwork uploaded on your Web site, then, yes, these guys will sue you if you are a day late with delivery, if your photograph of the item is not 100% accurate, if you charge separate for shipping and handling, there are actually a lot of possibilities where a lawsuit can be construed from and you don’t want to be a part of it. In case your Web site, or the location of your business is not in the United States, you really want to make sure that the jurisdiction is properly displayed, otherwise such a lawsuit may happen for instance in Poughkeepsie, New York and how do you properly and in timely manner respond to such claims, furthermore, where do you find a suitable lawyer to protect you?

Although there is no actual Internet law, the Internet is regulated by many local, international and multinational laws and treaties. Protecting yourself is just good common sense.