Today the internet is vast. Seemingly, it’s larger than planet Earth itself. It has been said that between 1990 and 1996 all known knowledge doubled. This is some statement. While much of this information is surely based on such occurrences as supercomputers running pi to it’s quad-zillionth decimal, even this constitutes knowledge, though most data is of a more useful and substantial type.
With such a vast “space” in which to “travel,” the net invariably attracts not only scientists, politicians, and students, but also people of a less ethical stratum: thieves. For this reason, the numbers of internet lawyers coming out of law schools are escalating each year. Internet law has taken on a new shape all of its own, by hints taken from laws ruling such bodies as the Federal Communications Center.
One of the more common laws that internet lawyers have been trained to identify and process within the courts is theft of intellectual property. Intellectual property, in a nutshell, comes down to words. While no one owns words per se, when those words come in a specific order, such as the words of a poem or novel, then this is the property of its creator. Even greater theft occurs with the illegal copying and downloading of music and other information that is sold on tapes or CD’s. In more abrupt terms, this is known as piracy.
Obscenity is yet another problem on the net. While pornography constitutes about 16% of all data on the web, very often obscenity may be found in web sites that do not warn the reader before coming into the site. For this reason, obtaining the advice of an internet lawyer may be crucial, especially if any nudity or anything that might be deemed perverse is shown.
Another recurrent situation, possibly the biggest crime on the net, for which internet lawyers are ever vigilant is spamming. Spamming is the sending of emails that are unsolicited (and usually unwanted) to businesses and individuals that are unknown to the spammers. This is a hot topic today and a source of much revenue for internet lawyers as heavy volumes of spam not only disrupt employees during working hours, but may even crash a mail server due to an excess of this spam. The laws are very clear on the subject, as set down on paper in the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing). Since this act became law in 2004, internet lawyers have been kept busy by interpreting this law to enforce it, or on the side of the spammers, to get by it.
The last problem is both interesting yet rampant. “Cyber-Squatting” is the purchase of the name of a well-known company or product and then either utilizing this company’s name to make money or to charge the company itself for this web address, at exorbitant prices, of course. This too is being cracked down on by internet lawyers who are eager for such cases as internet law has become more clearly defined with each passing year.
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