Here’s the non-legal intro to show you what it’s all about. Or you can omit reading it here, and read it in the document itself: Legal Implications of Internet Filtering.

Introduction:

Alexander turns on his computer, smiling as he hears the familiar chime. Colours fill the screen, a feast for his eyes, and he clicks on an icon, his gateway to the Internet. As he submits two words to a search engine and chooses the first result, as if advised by an old friend, Alexander is unaware of the underlying processes.

His computer converses with a network provider and asks whether Alexander may access the website.The network provider turns to a domain name server, to find out on which server the website is located, before finally connecting to the hosting provider to obtain transmission of the website data. Meanwhile, Alexander blinks. The Internet must be unhappy with him: he is denied access to the website. Alexander sighs, and goes back to the search results. He does not pause to consider whether access was blocked rightfully or whether this limits his freedom; he does not even contemplate complaining to anyone. After all, it’s the Internet, and he doesn’t understand it. How could he, a normal web user?

In this simplified tale of daily Internet use, Alexander is confronted with access denial to a website that appeared in search results. As he shares the general population’s lack of understanding of the technology underlying the Internet and the World Wide Web, he does not know why the information embodied in the website is not being transmitted to him. He is unable to assess whether the problem lies with the website owner or with any of the intermediaries between him and the website.

One possible explanation may, however, spring to the mind of an observer with some degree of technical knowledge: this access denial may come from a filter.

Once again, here’s the link to the dissertation: Legal Implications of Internet Filtering. Happy reading…

When I was twenty-two,
It was a very good year,
It was a very good year for independent life,
And nights in London town,
We rarely felt down,
And had great things to do,
When I was twenty-two

Thus Ervin Drake’s song (popularised by Frank Sinatra) would have gone, had the composer of “It Was A Very Good Year” benefited from my support as lyricist.
The academic year of 2009-2010 has now come and gone, and I believe my time in London was not only well spent but also great fun.
Between work and play, squirrels and pigeons, Irish and Indian, cuisine and grub, it was a wonderful blend of smiles and tears (well, not quite) from mid-September to end of June.

As an LLM student, I enjoyed lectures that qualified, in my view, as classes worthy of the degree of “Master of Laws”. Those who shared their knowledge and wisdom with us did so (overall) in a positive, instructive and interactive manner. I shall remember many a discussion about the implications of regulation by/of technology, about the reach of intellectual property, et cetera. Hopefully, I shall be able to put this acquired knowledge to good use in the near future; in any event, I know that the valuable teachings of my professors shall not have been wasted.

I encountered in London the same administrative frustration I found in my previous universities, but I am starting to think that this is inevitable (although it should not be so). Many of my fellow students had unacceptable problems regarding course or even exam timetables, even when they revolved around courses of one common specialism and would thus inevitably attract the same students. I have of late encountered much reluctance from my Faculty to allow me to communicate the creation of a new web board to all Law students (KCL-Law.net), and this is a form of censorship I sought to evade for the sake of all students by creating the web board.

As a London resident, I was able to take advantage of the wealth of cultural events that London has to offer, from musicals to museums, although my impression at the end of my stay was that I had not achieved all I set out to achieve. I bathed in the melting-pot of cultures that nourishes London, and had access to an array of sources of entertainment and, of course, plenty of shopping opportunities.

I was also, rather unfortunately, forced to deal with the inadequacies of London transport, from the frequent Tube closures to the incessant traffic congestion problems (especially around Oxford Street). Most annoying, or so I found, was the fact that London seems not to have been designed with pedestrians in mind: zebra crossings with traffic lights are few and far in between, and road names are for all intents and purposes absent outside of the main junctions, which made London navigation in my first months rather difficult.

Of course, living in Hampstead gave me ready access to wonderful scenery, beautiful houses and stunning vehicles. With all the green around, I felt relaxed, at ease. The worries of daily commuting and of the intensity of crowds were easily brushed aside by pleasurable walks in the neighbourhood.

Most of all, I met during this year many people who left their mark on my stay. Some were floor mates, some were course mates and some I knew from beforehand; all were friends. These are the people who made this year what it was, and it was both a privilege and a pleasure to share my year in London with them. As the world is a small place after all, I do not doubt that I shall see or keep in touch with some of them in the future. Regardless of what shall happen, I wish each and every one of them all the best for the years to come.

It was a learning experience. It was a living experience.
Truth be told, I do not regret it.

What is cyberlaw? Cyberlaw is the law applicable in ‘cyberspace’, a seemingly ‘global-economic zone, borderless and unregulatable’ (John Perry Barlow in 1966, quoted in Reed, 2004). Yet, as Chris Reed argues, it is possible to proceed to a localisation in the ‘physical’ world of the constituent elements of any given activity in cyberspace, and national laws will therefore apply, in accordance with rules on applicable law (such as the Rome I and Rome II Regulations, at the level of the European Union).

Therefore, there are as many legal orders in cyberspace as there are national (or supranational) legal orders.

Having made these preliminary remarks, the original question, to which the introductory statement refers, remains: is cyberlaw an area of law?

It is the opinion of the author of this essay that cyberlaw is not (yet) an area of law, but that it is a legal order. Let us examine why one might be led to such a conclusion.

Since the creation of the Internet and of the World Wide Web, where cyberspace activities mainly revolved around the exchange of purely academic information (see the first Usenet ‘newsgroups’), the array of activities carried out in cyberspace has never ceased to expand. The Internet is not only the realm of discussion, but it also houses commerce, crime, …

As cyberspace developed, so did national (and supranational) regulation of this ‘virtual’ world (e.g. the Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe or the E-Commerce Directive of the European Union and their respective national implementations). While some laws provide for the application of specific rules to cyberspace activities, many aspects of these activities remain governed by rules crafted with the physical world in mind.

Any activity in cyberspace will thus be governed by rules relating to contract law (e.g. contract liability), tort law (e.g. defamation), intellectual property law (e.g. copyright infringement), constitutional law (e.g. free speech), …, just as it would be if there were a physical equivalent to the activity in question. Where specific rules exist for cyberspace activities, these rules replace those of the physical world.

The preamble of the E-Commerce Directive is telling in this respect, as it states that ‘[t]he objective of this Directive is to create a legal framework to ensure the free movement of information society services between Member States and not to harmonise the field of criminal law as such’. This establishes a distinction between services and criminal law, notably for reasons linked to the European Union’s competence, and thus perpetuates and transposes the existing distinction between areas of law of the physical world into the virtual world.

Cyberlaw today therefore comprises both law of the physical world and specific law made for cyberspace in particular.

Can cyberlaw nevertheless be considered to be unique enough to qualify as an area of law distinct from all others? Proponents of this idea may draw arguments from the existence of ‘aviation law’, ‘space law’, ‘admiralty law’, … Indeed, Andrew Murray writes that ‘the aviation industry created a complex set of socio-legal requirements’ for an array of activities related to flights (Murray, 2007).

However, it is the opinion of this author that such is not yet the case for cyberlaw: if there is a threshold of specificity of legal norms to be attained for cyberlaw to be deemed an area of law, the sheer proportion of rules from the physical world still applying in cyberspace without modulation places cyberlaw well beneath this threshold. The set of ‘socio-legal requirements’ distinct to cyberspace is not yet sufficiently complex, as cyberlaw holds too many ties to law of the physical world.

Furthermore, this author is unconvinced of the possibility of cyberlaw ever becoming a distinct area of law (or at least not in the short run). Indeed, if the first decade of this 21st century is any indication, activities in cyberspace ten years from now will not be limited to what they are today. As activities in cyberspace become more diverse, the number of existing rules of the physical world applying to cyberspace will grow, and it is unlikely that regulators will provide for rules specific to cyberspace in all instances, leading thus to a perpetuation of the distinction among areas of law (traditionally of the physical world) in the virtual world.

Therefore, rather than contemplating the issue of whether cyberlaw is an area of law, this author suggests that it would be more appropriate to view cyberlaw not as an area of law, but as a legal order parallel to a legal order applying to the physical world.

Just as the physical legal order concerns the law of contract, the law of tort and other areas of law, so does the legal order applying to activities of the virtual world. In addition to its own rules in certain areas, where regulators deem it necessary to provide for specific rules in light of the nature of electronic communications and of the Internet, the virtual legal order contains rules stemming from the physical legal order, not unlike the way in which the legal order of any Member State of the European Union contains rules stemming from the legal order of the European Union.

Murray set out to prove that cyberlaw was an area of law notably to prove Joseph Sommer wrong, after the statement that ‘"cyberlaw" and "the law of the internet" are not useful concepts’ (Sommer, 2000). Perhaps his task would have been easier, had he viewed cyberlaw as a legal order: in this context, cyberlaw is a useful concept, as it enables a better understanding of the legal landscape.

References:
A Murray, The Regulation of Cyberspace: Control in the Online Environment (Routledge-Cavendish, Oxon 2007)
C Reed, Internet Law: Text and Materials (2nd ed Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004)
J Sommer, ‘Against Cyberlaw’ (2000) 15 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 1145.

I am in the process of finding a topic for the 15,000-word dissertation that I shall write during this year, and therefore wish to lay out my current ideas, in the hope that one or two might give their opinion.

When using the internet, most of us feel free: we can type anything in Google, and find our way to a million different results. We can go to Amazon or eBay, search for anything, and probably find one or two things of interest to us. We can read a blog, click on a link, and find ourselves reading articles of diverging points of view. A seemingly infinite realm of information is available at our fingertips.

However, all is not golden in this world of apparent freedom. In many States (from China to the UK), users are limited in their use of the internet by “filters”, which are meant to block access to specific (categories of) websites. Certain items of information are blocked in a more specific manner at the level of websites, when the website owner/administrator/moderator applies censorship. All in all, these intermediaries control available information.

As such, when user tries to access content, such access may be denied. Sometimes, the user is fully unaware of the existence of the information in question, but not all the time. Does this hinder freedom of access to information? Does this hinder the information creator’s freedom of speech? Whence does the right to censor/block information come? Is the creator or intermediary liable to the user if illegal/offensive/… material isn’t blocked? Is the intermediary liable to the creator or to the user for information wrongfully blocked? Does the creator not have a right to access the information created by himself?

This is the kind of question that I believe I would ask and try to answer. Concerns of legitimacy and effectiveness must be addressed, though the focus would be the legal point of view.

Any thoughts on the matter?

Another poet’s soul captured by an immortal city, perhaps? I did write a poem about the Serpentine lake, a magnet pulling all visitors towards its shores in Hyde Park and the Kensington Gardens:

Serpentine Song

Glitter, glitter, Serpentine,
May your birdsong grow, may your surface shine
In the light of day, you have frozen time
With an air so sweet that it tastes sublime

Whisper, whisper, Serpentine,
Such a mystic view makes you seem divine
When you speak to the trees, to the rose and lime,
Nature bows to the sound of your glorious chime

Remember, remember, Serpentine,
I shall always cherish this memory of mine.

It is worth stating that the mere writing of a poem about a place is not enough for me to fall in love with the place. As such, we must dig deeper to understand my sudden appreciation of this metropolis.

Some prior knowledge of my background is required: I grew up for five years in a small village in the green English countryside, amongst fire engines and goats; my family moved to Brussels, with a population of one million, right afterwards, and I have lived there ever since.
Brussels has become my “hometown”, despite my constant struggle with my Belgo-British identity – I refuse to be seen as Belgian, and am proud of only holding a British passport; however, I share much in common with the people of Brussels, from the simple yet crucial art of cooking to socio-political views on Europe (the latter are wholly unnecessary in our day-to-day lives, but they make for interesting discussions).

Coming from Brussels, where few claim to share a “Brussels identity”, I always considered Paris to be too proud of itself. The tall Eiffel Tower stands proud above our heads, and while the Louvre is an impressive feat of architecture, mixing classic and modern designs, I have never found it to be the most incredible gallery in the world. Like a dish made by a French “chef coq”, while the appearance is impressive, there is far less substance to it than one would expect, and one does not feel satisfied.

London, however, has invaded my innermost self, through subtle unexpected messages: a large “Les Misérables” poster, red-brick buildings, a Bentley or two, Shakespearean actors, Dixons.co.uk adverts in the Tube, Big Ben striking two o’clock in the afternoon. Taken separately, any one of these messages is without influence on a human being, even on abnormal ones such as myself. As a whole, the trickle of information speaking of an interesting and exciting city floods my mind and quickens my heart rate.

“What is Brussels?” is a question often uttered in Belgium, be it in a political, philosophical or demographical context. In contrast, in Britain, one never asks “What is London?”, but “What is London to you/me?”.

What then is London to the ever-anonymous Peter Craddock, after a mere two weeks?

It has mainly become a collection of memories.
Each day is a discovery, an adventure, as I slowly become familiar with my surroundings.
I have had the chance, nay, the privilege of making friends with an array of people from diverse and oft fascinating backgrounds. Even by staying in the confines of my floor in our accommodation building, I interact with the following nationalities: American, Canadian (English- and French-speaking), Chinese, English, German, Hungarian, Indian, Irish, Portuguese, Singaporean, Turkish.
With many of these people, I have had the opportunity to discover neighbourhoods, parks, tourist attractions, …, in a number too great to be determined by my forgotten mathematical skill.
So far, none of these memories contains any inkling of regret.

Despite this emotional character given to London, a number of more objective keywords may be attributed to it. I shall only mention two, which immediately spring to mind.
London is a hub. How else could one describe the large variety of people met, the socio-economic disparities, the sheer number of Tube passengers, the ever-present state of “organised chaos”?
London is alive. Musicals and plays cannot be counted, and there is too much going on at any given time for one to be able to fully experience London in a short period of time.

And did I mention that I now have university classes? However, news regarding those shall have to wait until I have come to know them better.

On the one side of the Hampstead Residence, walking for one minute will land you amidst Aston Martins, Jaguars and even the odd Rolls Royce, in an area of architectural magnificence. Rich, peaceful and quiet are the adjectives one might attribute to this zone.
On the other side, around Finchley Road, a squirrel hides from the busy traffic, seeking refuge in the green areas. The architecture is no longer grand but more heterogeneous, and during the 15-minute walk separating the Hampstead Residence from Finchley Road Tube Station (10 if you keep a good pace), residential areas mingle with shops.

Supermarkets are generally also 15 minutes away at a “student” walking pace, which makes for good exercise if done regularly.

Among the students one meets, many Hampstead residents come from Britain, Ireland, India and North America. Continental Europeans are easily outnumbered. While a great many like to party, I believe that my room is far enough from the bar of the Hampstead Residence so as to avoid unnecessary disturbance. Time will tell.

Saturday was a day of discovery, meeting dozens of new people and walking around Hampstead to find an array of stores, from Sainsbury’s to Tesco’s, from Homebase (akin to the Belgian Brico) to The Carphone Warehouse.
I was most disappointed to find out, at approximately 2-3 a.m. on the Sunday, that my living space had been invaded by my greatest foe, the mosquito. May I soon defeat him!

After a morning of discovering new Tesco stores on this Sunday with two friends, we were shown Hampstead in the briefest of manners, where our student guide spoke quietly to a group of many dozens of students and was thus inaudible.
After we were set loose to devour the population around Hampstead Tube Station, the aforementioned friends and myself went to Heath Park, which turned out to be not only immensely huge, but also insanely confusing, as its vastness and many hills removed any sense of direction, if people had one to begin with. It took us a good half hour to find our way back once we had realised that we weren’t sure of where we were going, too proud to retrace our steps. After all, where would be the adventure in that?

After another eventful evening, I had to get up early for enrolment, which for us LLM students (Master of Laws) took place from 9 a.m. onwards on the Monday. Good fun, because I got to meet a whole array of different people, most of which I am sure I’ll be seeing in the coming months.

The banks here have the strange policy of only accepting to open student accounts for you upon reception of a letter from KCL stating your local address, your followed course, … Nothing from any King’s Residence is accepted, it seems. Basically, they don’t want our money right away. Is that it?

And now, I have got internet access, although the process of hooking up to the IT services is not yet finished: the registration server for our King’s usernames has been flooded this past hour or so, which means that it is unavailable. E-mail and such therefore don’t come through, it seems. Hopefully that’ll be sorted out soon.

Tomorrow I have my first 20-minute introductions to two subjects of interest to me, namely “Regulation & Technology” and “Intellectual Property”. The law geek in me says “can’t wait”, while the human in me says “here we go again” with a touch of melancholy, a zest of nostalgia and the hint of a giggle.

Nevertheless, the news item remains the same: I have successfully completed my Master’s degree in Law. As of Friday 26 June 2009, I have become a “Master of Laws”, and with “Distinction” too (for the Brits, it’s a “2:1″; for others, it translates into a “B”).

There, you may bow down before me and call me “Master”.

Now… one year left. I have met the requirements for my offer at King’s College London to become “unconditional”, so there’s a 99% chance I’ll be in London next year, for a course on Information Technology Law.
Yet more law, I know. I must be suicidal. That’s life!

That break turned out to be spent on another kind of work, web design. In July, I will normally become the administrator for our Law Faculty student webboard & website, and I grew somewhat tired of the Cobalt theme for phpBB2, which is currently used.
I therefore got to work on another design, something fresh.

The result is a working board on www.arpia.be/droides/, only a test so far. The board is in French, but I’m looking for feedback on the general design, which shouldn’t require a great deal of linguistic skills. There’s a test user, “Test”, with the password set as “testpass”.
Anything that desperately needs changing? Suggestions? …?
There are two working themes, and you can switch between them in the footer (“Droïdes – Droïdes2″). Just click, and a whole new layout appears.

Edit: updated.

Clocking in at 63 pages (81 pages with the cover, table of contents and bibliography), my Mémoire analyses in a first stage whether in general, the European institutions make use of comparative law. In the second part, I analyse a number of different, recent acts, to determine whether the use of comparative law has had any influence on the act’s content.

Now, I won’t recommend reading this if the general idea isn’t remotely interesting to you.
If on the other hand the idea piques your interest, rest assured that I have tried to make the content fully accessible to people with no knowledge of law (well, at least the first part – the second uses a bunch of legal concepts).

So, if interested, you can view/download/print the PDF document: Use of Comparative Law in European Law.

Note the “Peter A. Craddock”, to avoid confusion with the other Peter Craddocks of the world.

While this statement may be somewhat exaggerated (ever so slightly), it is based on the ultimate proof: my observations.

During my first year at university, back in September 2004, there were probably 10 laptops present during lectures, while we were 300 students in our first year of Law. Laptops were marginal, as they have been for many a year in universities in Continental Europe, where courses are often given ex cathedra and aren’t highly interactive.

In third year, the proportion had increased: there were probably 8-10 laptops for 120 students. At most, you would see two G4 iBooks (or one iBook and one brand new MacBook), and PowerBooks were nowhere to be seen in the Law and Political Science faculties.

When I started my fourth year, I decided to bring along the MacBook I had received for my 20th birthday. As we were starting our Master’s degree, we were in a bigger university, and there were 400 students. We started the year with probably 10-15 laptops, and by the end of the year, we were approaching 30 laptops, 3-4 of which were Macs.

And then came the fifth year, 2008-2009. Boom. Explosion in the number of laptops.
During the first term, of September to December, we found ourselves in much smaller groups, because of the increased variety in classes. In my classes, we were usually 40. On any given day, there were usually 8-10 laptops, 3 of which were Macs.
During the second term, it seems to be even worse: 40 students, some 10 laptops, and easily 6-7 Macs.

I’ve gone from being a pompous self-righteous geek to being just like the majority of the hard-wired cases! What has happened?

Fortunately, the majority of the Mac users there still use Microsoft Office, whereas I use iWork. Yay, I am still somewhat different!