Cyber Law Ah, the joys of e-mailinstant communication of thoughts. You feel it. You say it.

You send it. But, if your message is perceived as a threat, you could be prosecuted and convicted for it. In the first conviction of an online hate crime, a 21year-old Los Angeles man was found guilty in federal court. He sent death threats by e-mail to more than 50 Asian students. The case set a precedent, as it put Internet communications on equal legal ground with telephone calls and postal mail. It also addressed civil rights violations committed online-hate crimes in this case. The defense team argued this was a stupid prank and that so-called flames or abusive messages are commonplace with Internet culture and discussion groups. The jury thought otherwise and took the threats seriously. At first the Net was considered to be a fantasy land where users could be anonymous. This case shows that the legal system will not treat the Net differently from other forms of communication. Defamatory statements published on Internet bulletin boards, e-mails, and the like, are considered libel due to the somewhat permanent nature of the medium. This often is vital to a successful suit for defamation as damages are presumed to exist in the case of libel and do not have to be proven to the court. The remaining question becomes who should be sued. This is the hard part. Sections of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and several court decisions provide protections to Internet service providers and bulletin board operators. Such parties generally are considered to be immune from suits brought to make up for the harm done by such statements. However, they may be held liable if it can be shown that they exercised editorial or full control of the material posted or transmitted or, at least, had knowledge of the specific defamatory contents. Such a showing has proven very difficult to accomplish. Fraud is one of the fastest-growing threats facing consumers today. Because many consumer transactions now take place over the internet, consumers also face the prospect of online fraud. In 1996, the National Consumers League started the internet Fraud Watch project and the national Fraud Information Center web site. Consumers can access the web site to get tips on how to avoid scams and fraud 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Many of the scams involve travel fraud. Travel fraud is growing quickly and involves bargain vacation packages, travel vouchers, and prize trips for a small fee. In Operation Trip-Up, the Federal Trade Commission and 12 other law enforcement agencies brought 36 separate actions against travel-related scams. Attorneys general in many states have established special task forces to handle Internet fraud. To curb Internet fraud, education is the key to protection. Go to http://www.fraud.org/ and click on Internet Fraud and then Internet Fraud Tips. Although in mid-2004, the U.S. Supreme Court for the second time decided to put on hold the enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act of 1988, enforcement of the Act is once again being pursued by the U.S. Department of Justice. In its 2004 decision, the Court in its majority opinion stood behind First Amendment free-speech advocates who had maintained that there were less-restrictive means of preventing childrens access to pornography on the web. The opinion by Justice Kennedy stated: content-based prohibitions, enforced by severe criminal penalties, have the constant potential to be a repressive force in the lives and thoughts of a free people. To guard against that threat, the Constitution demands that content-based restrictions on speech be presumed invalid and that the government bear the burden of showing their constitutionality. By content-based prohibitions, Justice Kennedy was pointing to the part of the law that made it a criminal act to knowingly and for commercial purposes make any material that is harmful to minors accessible to them. Justice Kennedy also noted that such a pervasive and ambiguous law would chill legitimate speech. A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who agreed with the Court in putting enforcement of the Act on hold stated: The Court has made it safe for artists, sex educators and Web publishers to communicate with adults about sexuality without risking jail time. Contract laws application to the Internet currently is in open dispute in most states of the union. An effort by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, whose efforts have produced many proposed statutes that are then offered to the states for adoption, recently resulted in the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act. However, as with other model statutes in the electronic business arena, only two states adopted its original version. The UCITA met with a lot of resistance by the states because, according to state authorities, it made most consumer-protection statutes irrelevant. It did this by failing to define computer software as goods. This is because most, if not all, consumer-protection statutes specifically apply to goods.

Sending mass, unsolicited advertisements over the internet is a practice known as spamming. Many receivers do not appreciate receiving these unsolicited e-mails. Initially, spammers maintained that they had an absolute First Amendment right to send e-mails and pop-up ads. However, as a consequence of laws passed in California and Washington allowing spammers to be sued by recipients, the spamming industry changed its position to agreement with those desiring regulation to produce the federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. This Act preempts state laws and allows unsolicited e-mails as long as they contain an opt-out mechanism, an adult content label if appropriate, and information identifying the sender. Many businesses enter into contracts via the Internet that under the Statute of Frauds would require a writing. Without such a paper representation of the contractfor example, for a sale of goods valued at more than $500the agreement basically is unenforceable. Under UCITA such contracts are explicitly held to be valid as long as a record or authentication is available. Other issues that remain unresolved are the validity of electronic signatures, the effect of minority, and the requirements for proof of conditions that invalidate assent, such as intoxication, insanity, etc. Finally, under UCITA, tie-in sales using silence as acceptance would be legal unless a states consumer protection statute renders them illegal. The terms in tie-in sales essentially state, you bought our original version of the software, so well send you updates and charge you for them until you tell us not to. You probably view the e-mail you send as your own personal property. But what about the e-mail you send at work? Many companies now have e-mail policies about who owns the e-mail correspondence and whether the company considers the messages to be confidential. The courts have ruled that e-mails are the property of the company. However, in several states such as California, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, and Montana, statutes have superseded these court rulings. These statutes require the permission of all parties to the electronic transmission (e-mail) to enable the employer to read it. Other states allow the reading with only one parts permission while still others adhere to the original court ruling. The result is a confused state of the law. The bottom line: Be careful before you press the Send button. E-mail messages may not be confidential or your exclusive private property. You may have head the phrase buying swamp land in Florida. That phrase originated with get-rich quick land deals in the 1920s. In most such transactions people invested in real estate that turned out to be swamp and wilderness land. Today, the Florida swamp land schemes have been replaced with Internet real estate offers. These offers claim you dont need money to start or even need a real estate brokers license to get rich selling real estate. You just need to say yesand then send money. These land deals typically dont even involve land. What you receive for your money is either a seminar or book on making money. All you learn is that your investment money now belongs to someone else. If such an e-mail offer comes to you, you may want to simply press the Delete key before trying to make quick money through real estate over the Internet. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is the government agency that runs the social security program in the U.S. The SSA has one of the most extensive web sites of any government agency. When you visit www.ssa.gov you can perform a number of functions. You can learn about the history of the SSA and its plans for the future. You can inquire about all of the benefits that the SSA offers, such as retirement income and Medicare medical insurance. You also can request many of the services the SSA offers directly from the website. The SSA accepts requests from the web site for personal earnings and benefits summaries. Companies also can download forms used to report employees earnings and wages to the SSA. The Internet has increased the efficiency of their programs. In 1970, the Occupational Safety and health Act became law. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) makes rules pertaining to safe working conditions and conducts inspections to discover and prosecute dangerous conditions and rule violations. OSHAs rules apply to firms with eleven or more employees that are engaged in interstate commerce. The Department of labor enforces those rules. The official form for complaint submission along with instructions on how to properly fill it out can be downloaded from the OSHA web site at . http://www.osha.gov/ The Internet has had a major impact on investing in corporations. In the past, stock transactions could be made only through hiring the services of a stock broker. Now, those same transactions can be made from your computer through an Internet brokerage. With online trading you can make stock trades at any time of the day that a market is open and

commissions are lower. Investors also can find a wealth of online information about corporations to help them make wise investment decisions. Today a number of companies provide services that allow a business to be incorporated via the internet. Basically, the provider of the service does the paperwork and filing of the documents. It also typically acts as the long-term representative, called a registered agent, for the new company in the jurisdiction awarding the charter. Because of revenue generated, states vie for the position of most hospitable to foreign (out of state) incorporators. Delaware and Nevada are the most utilized jurisdictions at the moment. Through the Internet it is possible to exercise the option of incorporating offshore with relative ease. Offshore typically refers to safe financial havens where privacy is as much as currency as the dollar and means out of the jurisdiction of the U.S. and the easy reach of its legal process. Many havens associated with Great Britain, such as the Cayman Islands, Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos, the isle of Man, and the British Channel Islands have had the privacy protection diminished by international accords. New havens such as the Caribbean Island of Nevis are taking their place. Services are now available online to allow the sending of money orders via the Internet. These services stem from the need to be able to eliminate fraud and forgeries in paying for purchases made during cyber auctions. Online auction houses now offer the successful bidder the alternative of sending a money order. This is done by going to the auction houses web site and entering the auction details and payment information. The amount is debited against whatever credit or debit card is on file for the bidder. The auction house will then send payment to the seller by mailing a Western Union brand money order. A form of electronic fund transfer used widely in international transactions is electronic data interchange (EDI). With EDI, transport documents such as bills of lading, and others, such as import-export papers and invoices are sent via computer to their destinations. Use of EDI helps to speed up international transactions for multinational corporations and other companies that do business internationally. Rules governing the EDI transfer of bills of lading and other transport documents have been adopted by an international trade organization, the Comite Maritime International (CMI). The rules govern the problem of negotiating the transport documents. The party who has the right to control and transfer the goods is designated as the holder in the computer records. According to CMI, EDI can be used for transport documents only upon agreement of all parties involved in the transaction.