Journal of internet law

Since the beginning of the public exploitation of the Internet, even before the World Wide Web became such a success, the legislature tried to harness the legal circumference and put the whole mess in an easy to use journal. In 2000, the first journal of Internet law became available, only online, posted by a third year law student by the name of Christopher Gerstle. He went on to become a successful real estate player.

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.