TEL 555 – Law, Policy and Regulation

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Players:

 

US

·         Multiple agencies interact to regulate (Congress, FCC, Courts, etc…) and international bodies

·         Climate of deregulation

·         FCC’s Role

·         FCC and Pioneer Preference Policy

 

Global

·         Governments

·         Pressure Groups

·         Policy Institutes

·         Consultants

·         International Organizations

 

 

Johnson and Post “The Rise of Law on the Global Network”

 

Geographic borders are not applicable in cyberspace

 

Regulation attempts and problems

·         Unknown physical location

·         Regulation of transborder data flows (TDFs) is extremely difficult

·         Filters

·         Governing bodies

 

Cyberspace as a Place: Develop laws solely for cyberspace

 

Self-Regulation

·         System operators

·         See this Netiquette Guide (one of thousands on the web)

·         “If there is one central principle on which all local authorities within the Net should agree, it must be that territorially local claims to restrict online transactions in ways unrelated to vital and localized interests of a territorial government should be resisted.  This is the Net equivalent of the First Amendment…”

 

 

Cybercrimes

 

See:
Crime on the Internet in the Jones Telecommunications & Multimedia Encyclopedia

 

Cybercrimes by the University of Daytona School of Law

 

 

Recent Developments in U.S. Telecommunications Policy

 

 

National Information Infrastructure (NII) - U.S. VP Al Gore

 

1993/94: Emerging Public Policy Principles for NII

 

Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP), a consortium of thirteen high-tech corporations such as AT&T, proposed principles for the NII(1993):

 

·         Access

·         First Amendment

·         Privacy

·         Security

·         Confidentiality

·         Affordability

·         Intellectual property

·         New technologies

·         Interconnectivity

·         Competition

·         Carrier liability

 

 

1996: Congress passes the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (TCA 96)

 

Broadband highlights of the TCA 96:

 

·         Cable rates

·         Ownership

·         Competition

 

TCA 96 also included the passage of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDC)

 

·         Defines as a criminal offense any communication that is legally obscene or indecent if that communication is sent over a telecommunications device “with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person”;

·         Penalizes any person or entity who, by use of a telecommunication device, “knowingly ... makes or makes available” any content or material that is legally obscene; and

·         Penalizes any person or entity who “knowingly ... makes or makes available” to a person under the age of 18 any content or material that is “indecent.”

 

Problems:

 

What is “indecent” speech?

 

·         Constitutionality?

 

Internet: no scarcity and “push vs. pull”

 

In 1997 the Supreme Court ruled that the CDA '96 is unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment

 

 

1998: Child Online Protect Act (COPA, or CDA II)

 

·         Established criminal penalties for any “commercial” distribution of material deemed "harmful to minors"

 

Problems

 

·         Overly broad

·         Prior restraint on publication

·         A flawed “community standards” approach

 

1998: Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) from EPIC

 

Basic Rights of Children Under 13 and their Parents

·         Notice

·         Prior Parental Consent

·         Prevention of Further Use

·         Collection of Personal Information Must be Limited

·         Access to Information

 

Open Access Debate (Open vs. Forced)

 

European Union’s Directive on Data Protection
Effective on Oct. 24, 1998

·         Strict international rules governing the collection, use, and exchange of personal information about European citizens

 

·         Purposes

1.  Protect individual privacy and

2.  Free flow of information-member states cannot restrict lawful information flow between countries

 

Data processing must be:

1.    Legitimate purposes for which they were collected

2.    Accurate and up to date and

3.    Have expressed consent (freely given and informed indication)

 

Disclosure:

1.    name and address

2.    purpose for collection

3.    voluntary or required

4.    recipients or category of recipients and

5.    right of access and corrections

 

Access/Corrections/Objections

 

Security/Remedies/Liability

 

Data transmission third party countries (not in the EU)

 

Potential effects on the U.S (and other countries)

 

U.S. Policy

 

Other Countries

“Privacy and Human Rights: An International Survey of Privacy Laws and Practice” by the Global Internet Liberty Campaign