If you fancy spending approximately 24 USD/18.50 Euros on a sci-fi novel of epic scale (seriously: 503 pages in A5 format, 650 in a slightly smaller format), I suggest you read on…

For those who don’t want to read this but want the book in physical format, please visit the Arpia novel page at Lulu.com. There, you’ll find a high quality yet cheap print-on-demand version of the Arpia novel, and the shipping costs worldwide are fairly low.

Note: the prices here are as low as I could get them. I decided against royalties, so you’re paying for the print-on-demand itself only.

Of the three solutions, Blackwell was the most expensive and, unfortunately, the one with the lowest quality. The cost is currently 5p per page, i.e. a bit over £30 for a copy of the Arpia novel, and the heavy paper used for the cover is not quite as high grade as the others. Moreover, the binding doesn’t seem as sturdy as the others. If you live in London and go to that bookstore (on Charing Cross Road) often, however, it may be an easy solution.

The Createspace solution allows Arpia to appear on Amazon.com, which is awesome, but I have no idea of whether this will extend to the other Amazon websites (.co.uk, .fr, …). Shipping from Createspace cost me almost as much as the price of the book itself, as it was shipping from the US… Result: 18.51 USD for shipping to the EU. Apparently, they only have printers in the US, so it may not be the best solution for people based outside of North America. A major qualm I have with Createspace is the fact that it wasn’t easy to set my own “spine” design (the side cover), and theirs is, frankly, not very nice.
Cost in store: 24.17 USD.

Finally, my favourite solution: Lulu.com. This has the highest quality cover paper, and I was forced to adopt a new format for Lulu.com, namely A5. The other two solutions use a format that is slightly smaller than A5, which makes the novel nearly pocket-size. The A5 format does, however, have an unforeseen advantage: the star maps included in the novel are more readable. One of the great things about Lulu.com is that it uses printers around the world, which means that shipping costs are lower than the other solutions. To ship to the EU, I paid 6 Euros.
Cost in store: 18.50 Euros/22.56 USD/£15.66.

Edit: added the Amazon.com link.

This led me to recall the existence of an “Espresso Book Machine”, an easy way for aspiring authors and others to obtain a printed version of a book, be it their own or one that is out of publication (but still with a digital presence). This machine can be found in Blackwell, on Charing Cross Road in London.

On 25 August 2010, I was in London to hand in a paper copy of my dissertation for my LLM, and I took advantage of the trip to London to order one copy of my book. When I receive the copy by post, I’ll be able to let you Londoners know whether you should consider ordering a little sci-fi novel from there – they currently charge 5p a page, which given the size of my novel amounts to £30… Definitely the most expensive novel I’ve bought!

I’m going to work on making the novel available in ePub and other formats (note: ePub now available), perhaps also on online e-book catalogues (if possible for free) and on other self-publishing print-on-demand platforms (hopefully not too expensively).

In the meantime, though, why not take a look at the Arpia novel page, and read through the first chapters or the entire book?

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…

If you have any interest in the questions of why countries filter the Internet, of why speed bumps are preferred to simple car speeding laws, of how Alex in A Clockwork Orange may be our future, I heartily recommend that you take a look at lawcode.net, a place where a few friends and myself will attempt to bring these questions into the open, with the hope that as time goes by, people from all over will contribute articles or short columns.

You don’t need to be a lawyer and you don’t need to be a technologist. All you need is an interest, however remote, in the questions that will appear there. So why not take a look and see what you think?

Law Code: choice is but a memory.

The existence of the Order of the Two Magpies was unknown to most of the world for many centuries, but on 3 June 2010, P.C. discovered an anomaly in a number of paintings exhibited at the National Gallery, London: there appeared to be a motif common to art of different eras, namely a constant depiction of two birds, generally resembling magpies. Their significance, at first deemed to be a mere coincidence, soon led to the unraveling of the greatest mystery known to man.

Clues left behind by Rubens

It was the examination of several paintings by the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens that piqued P.C.’s interest: in A Shepherd with his Flock in a Woody Landscape (link to the painting’s page on the National Gallery’s website), in The Watering Place (link) and in A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning (link), Rubens includes two birds flying together. While the birds may appear to be of different species according to the painting, it was a sufficiently puzzling inclusion to intrigue the art historian.

Pursuing the search

After this discovery, the mystery increased as P.C. examined other paintings in the National Gallery.

Thus, the two birds could also be found in the painting Tobias and the Archangel Raphael (link – author unknown, said to be based on a composition by Adam Elsheimer).
Furthermore, there are two such birds in Saint Catherine of Alexandria with a Donor (link), a much earlier work, by Bernardino di Betto, otherwise known as Pintoricchio.
[Other paintings portraying the two birds have been omitted from this list due to lack of notes on them]

A number of other works include more than two birds, but feature two of them more prominently.
Thus, in A Castle on a Hill by a River by a Dutch imitator of Jacob van Ruisdael (link), four birds are visible in the sky, though two of them fly together. The same is true of A Deerhound with Dead Game and Implements of the Chase by Jan Weenix (link) and of The Watering Place by Thomas Gainsborough, which echoes the painting by Rubens (link).
In A Boy holding a Grey Horse, attributed to Abraham van Calraet (link), two birds are flying together, with four other birds in the distance. A similar pattern can be found in A Herdsman with Seven Cows by a River, by an imitator of Aelbert Cuyp (link), and in A Scene on the Ice, by Andries Vermeulen (link).

Understanding the clues

Are the two birds significant? Most sceptics would dismiss such a claim. Indeed, it may be mere coincidence, as such sceptics would have us believe.
There is, however, one fact that the sceptics do not take into account. As cultural critic N.B. stressed, “it is so crazy an idea that it might be true”.

If we approach the mystery from this angle, more questions ensue, but none are without an answer:

Why did the painters leave clues?

Much like any secret organisation, many members of the Order of the Two Magpies felt pride in being part of this exclusive group. We may presume that a debate followed Pintoricchio’s depiction of the two birds, if this is indeed the first such depiction, with the possible result that only obscure references were tolerated. Such a result is likely, as Pintoricchio’s popularity did not falter after Saint Catherine of Alexandria with a Donor was made; rather, it grew as Pintoricchio was summoned to work in the Vatican.

When was the Order of the Two Magpies founded?

Current findings do not provide a definite answer to this question, but the lack of known depictions of the two birds suggests that Pintoricchio was among the earliest members. Further research is required to ascertain the truth of this assumption.

What was the purpose of the Order of the Two Magpies?

The most fundamental question that P.C. faced was that of the purpose of said Order.

After examining the paintings depicting the two birds, P.C. stumbled upon Raphael’s painting entitled The Mond Crucifixion (The Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary, Saints and Angels, named “Mond Crucifixion” after its former owner – link), which shows two angels in the air around the crucified Christ, holding chalices to gather Christ’s blood.

Could this be relevant? This work was made after Pintoricchio’s Saint Catherine, and when putting the two together, P.C. made an astonishing discovery: P.C.’s findings suggest that the Order of the Two Magpies held the key to one of the greatest mysteries of our existence, namely how we humans came to exist.

Indeed, the following reinterpretation puts our entire existence into perspective: in Raphael’s painting, the two angels behave like magpies and take life (blood) from a dying divinity. The angels/magpies are analogies for we, as humans, as Adam and Eve, who came to consciousness only by taking from our superior guardians.

P.C. notes that this theory was coincidentally embodied in a recent work of great cultural value, the tale of Ezio Auditore da Firenze and Desmond Miles, Assassin’s Creed II. That work, however, is slightly more violent than P.C.’s theory.

Disclaimer: the author of this article does not believe a single word of P.C.’s theory. This was merely an aftermath of the examination period.

“This is a nice place,” he said with a hesitant smile.

Look me in the eye, the girl wanted to reply as his eyes returned from examining the surroundings to staring at her lips. Instead, she nodded. Why had she accepted his invitation?

“And it’s nice that they allow you to take your pet with you.”

The girl’s thoughts went straight to Artemis, the animal nested on her lap. She felt Artemis stiffen, and she stroked her on the neck to soothe her. It was inevitable that people would mistake a firnex for an unintelligent pet, probably thinking it was a simple fennec fox, but speaking with so little tact and by repeating a bland adjective demonstrated stupidity.

“She gets special treatment throughout Yubenia,” the girl said. It was true, too: many restaurants in the city of Yubenia knew to tolerate Artemis’s presence. Orders from above. The girl looked at Artemis and smiled. She wanted to see if the boy had any wit. “After all, she is more intelligent than most humans, including you.”

The boy chuckled uneasily.

“So how do you know this restaurant?”

He was either mentally deficient, without humour or a combination of those elements. Pity, he had shown so much potential in that club the other day. Perhaps he was only good at dancing.

She glanced at Artemis, who was scratching her jaw with her paw. Boring indeed. She stopped stroking Artemis and reached for a button on her belt.

“My mum had a fling with this guy –”

She stopped upon hearing the tone on her intercom.

“Oh, speak of the devil. Sorry, I have to take this.”

The boy nodded, and she put her hand to her ear.

“Hey Mum!”

“What is it, darling? You want a way out of a date again?”

“What? That’s awful! How did you do that? I’ll be there right away. Which hospital?”

“Do you want a lift back home?”

“I’ll pull over a transport, don’t argue.”

“All right, I’ll be there in five minutes maximum. Same place?”

“Okay, stay put! I love you!”

She turned back to the boy, hoping that distress was plain to see on her face.

“I’m really, really sorry, but my mum just had an accident.”

She let Artemis hop on the floor before taking her coat.

“That’s terrible,” said the boy.

“I know, but I guess that’s life. Thanks for the invitation, though.” She rushed to the door of the restaurant, and waved back at him. “Call me, all right?”

She stepped out into the cool evening breeze of February as the door cut the boy’s inevitable reply from her hearing. No, he did not have her number, nor would he ever be able to find any means of making contact.

As the girl walked away from the restaurant in the empty street, she smiled. She liked being elusive, a stunning whirlwind without a name. It had been so since the age of fourteen. Nearly four years later, she still enjoyed this game.

Artemis barked a few times, and the girl laughed.

“If I took you to clubs, I’d never dance for fear of losing you in the crowd.”

Artemis uttered a low growl amidst higher pitched barks.

“Are you crazy? I’m antisocial enough as it stands. If I didn’t go to any parties, no one would even know I exist. No one would care.”

Artemis stopped walking, and a soft growl came from her canine mouth.

The girl smiled and brushed a stray lock of her dark hair behind her cold ears.

“I know you do. I’m sorry, I’m being foolish again. I’ll make it up to you, but first, let’s go find Mum. We don’t want this poor guy to see us loitering out here, do we?”

Artemis shook her head, and a keen-eyed observer might have noticed a smile appear on her face.

As they walked briskly towards the usual meeting place, the girl sighed inside. Despite how close she was to Artemis, she still felt human at times, and had her own desires. More so than her mum, it seemed, though Parmil Szarnu didn’t freely talk of her experiences with men, especially given that Borreli, her best friend and possibly the closest she had ever had to true love, died half the galaxy away some eight years ago. Here on planet Culuria, however, there didn’t seem to be a single young man capable of creating any kind of lasting spark within the girl. She wanted to be inspired. Her eyes drifted to the stars. She hoped that she would find a way to leave this planet with Artemis before too long.

They came to a junction opening on a park, the Bardrien Memorial Park. Why she always wanted to use that park as meeting point, she didn’t know. She certainly didn’t want to hurt her adoptive mum’s feelings, but there was something deeply refreshing about coming to a place that honoured her birth parents, even a dozen years after their respective deaths.

The girl read the plaque on one bench in the park, despite knowing it off by heart: ‘To Kristala, who dedicated her life to her husband, to her daughter and to scientific progress on Culuria. You shall always be remembered’. At the opposite side of the park was a similar plaque for Ernie Bardrien.

This park had been inaugurated less than a year after the separate deaths of Ernie and Kristala, of whom the girl had few memories nowadays. She was still young when they died. Kristala would indeed always be remembered on Culuria, but not necessarily by her own daughter.

Artemis hopped onto the bench and shivered. She barked. To anyone else, the barks would have been meaningless, but the girl knew that Artemis had advised her not to sit on the icy bench.

“Girls!”

It was the one human voice that the girl trusted and loved unconditionally. A smile growing on her face, she turned to see a vehicle hovering ten metres away.

“We’re coming,” she shouted before putting her arms level with the bench, her palms upward. Artemis accepted the offer and nestled her golden fur in the girl’s arms.

A caring face looked at them from the vehicle, still as beautiful as ever, looking much the same at the age of thirty-eight as it had ten years beforehand, back when they first met.

A door opened, and the girl walked inside the vehicle, settling down comfortably into a seat.

Artemis jumped onto the adjacent seat and barked. The girl knew the meaning, although her mother had to check a translation device. It had been several years since they found Artemis, but Parmil still had trouble with a number of the newer words Artemis had created to adapt her language. The words appeared on the device.

“Do the rules allow me to drive?”

“Sorry Artemis,” said Parmil. “Although we can bend many rules for you, I don’t think they would allow you to have a licence.”

“Then I am afraid that you must wait before this dating nonsense no longer bothers you.”

Parmil laughed, and the girl blushed.

“I’m sorry, Mum.”

“I know, darling. It’s all right.”

The girl bit her lip.

“Did I disturb you in the middle of something?”

Parmil smiled.

“So now you ask?”

The girl felt her cheeks redden.

“No, darling, it was nothing important. I was just chatting with Ekrid.”

The girl smiled.

“How is he?”

“He says that he misses his goddaughter, but he’ll be back on Culuria in two weeks.”

“Good. Since he took up his new interplanetary advisory job, the government on Culuria has lost some of its quality.”

The girl saw her mother raise an eyebrow.

“Since when are you interested in politics?”

“We have discussed it often, for years.”

Parmil seemed surprised.

“Sorry Mum, we didn’t want to bore you with that.”

“A wise choice,” Parmil said, nodding. “Well, if you like it, girls, then so be it. Do you have any other surprises stored away for today?”

The girl laughed.

“Mum, who do you take me for? A magician?”

“No, the devil. Worse: Wadina Szarnu. Now activate your seatbelt, and let’s go home. I’ve got a kettle boiling.”

The following week seemed to last for ever, the days dragging along as Wadina thought about the prospect of speaking to Ekrid again, for the first time in over eight months.

Wadina looked forward to seeing her godfather for one reason in particular: he was her primary source of political knowledge, and through him she had learnt much of what happened behind the scenes in governments throughout the galaxy. For the longest time, Ekrid Malrow was a permanent member of the government of Culuria, a title bestowed upon him for his services to the planet’s population, but his influence went far beyond the confines of this small planet and the Residio star system. Now, he was a special advisor to each of the three major interstellar governments: the Yolniun, the Absolem Constitutor and the Azzurdi Empire. All because of Arpia, a little group of idealists fighting piracy who had become both the government of an independent planet and a household name.

Was Wadina part of Arpia? She had it in her blood, but she became a teenager only after Arpia’s glory days, when the actions of a few changed the face of the universe. If anything, the Wadina of today was ‘post-Arpia’, a product of an era in which the old crowd could only recount the past and not work towards the future.

“Artemis, we’ll have adventures of our own,” she said, looking out the window of her room at the two setting suns of the Residio system.

“If you say so, young one.”

Wadina grimaced.

“Ugly expressions suit you well, too. Where do you want to go? You have explored half the galaxy already.”

“I don’t want to explore. I want something to happen, something big. A radical change in the universe, like what happened when we met.”

Wadina did her best not to react to the laugh that Artemis made.

“I remember days when you looked for stability in your life, but those days are long gone. You want adventures? We have had this discussion before, and I have already told you to be patient, little cub. It will come soon.”

Artemis licked Wadina’s hand after speaking, but Wadina frowned.

“You definitely seem more confident than last time. What do you know?”

“I have observed that space is moving differently recently. Something is stirring. What it is, I don’t know, but maybe Ekrid will have answers.”

It’s frustrating, because I hope to work in this very field (I find it fascinating), and all I seem to see are the manners in which people have been slowly destroying the system by acting in a way that they believe helps the system.

Copyright

First, a little introduction on copyright and Digital Rights Management (and here, I’ll be basing my analysis on the system in English law – see the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) 1988).

Copyright is an exclusive right for a person to certain acts, with respect to a specific “work” (a product, …): copying the work, issuing copies to the public, renting/lending the work to the public, performing/showing/playing the work to the public, communicating the work to the public, making an adaptation of the work (these are the “restricted acts”).

The most well-known right among these is the right to copy the work, and copyright implies that if A has copyright in work 1, B cannot copy work 1.

This right has limitations, the biggest one being that if A gives a licence to B (in effect an authorisation), B is allowed to copy work 1.

Now, Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems have gained in importance over the last few decades, as the digital revolution unfolded and it became surprisingly easy to copy works such as digital music recordings, computer games, digital versions of films, …

In effect, DRM systems enable the rights holder to prevent many of the aforementioned “restricted acts” by rendering them more difficult, through the use of technology.

DRM has been heralded by many as a means of reducing piracy, notably by the music industry after Napster and Kazaa brought file-sharing to the world of computer users.

However, more often than not, it seems that DRM hurts those who legally acquire an item more than it hurts those who acquire it illegally.

Let us look at a recent case study, a controversy around the upcoming Assassin’s Creed II game for the PC (AC2), a sequel to the popular Assassin’s Creed. Ubisoft released AC2 a few months ago for several game consoles, but the PC version is only set for release around mid-March.

As the release date approaches, reports have surfaced of a new kind of DRM: it seems that Ubisoft require gamers on the PC version of AC2 to have a constant internet connection for the game to work. If your internet connection quivers, you lose all progress since your last checkpoint. If you don’t have an internet connection, you can’t play.

Who does this hurt most?

Theory 1: “piracy”. This is the official explanation. Ubisoft believe that game piracy on the PC is so large that the only way to stop it is to ensure that only players with a legally acquired copy (so-called “legit users”) can save their progress. This does not convince me: Ubisoft have stated that they can “release a patch so that the game can be played in single-player without an online connection” (source), which means that pirates may very well create the patch themselves, and pirate copies will start floating around the internet very soon.

Theory 2: Ubisoft and “legit users”. This seems to be the point the entire internet community is making, from Ubisoft’s own web forums to Ars Technica. It boils down to this: many people who have bought Ubisoft games in the past are frustrated by the announcement of this limitation, and will not buy the game. Therefore, Ubisoft have less pre-orders of its games. People who buy this game will be frustrated by the sudden inability not to continue playing the moment their internet connection drops, and will perhaps not buy Ubisoft games in the future. Therefore, less profit for Ubisoft in the long run. And both kinds of users may resort to piracy to go around this limitation. Therefore, piracy goes up.

Unless Ubisoft realise this soon (the game will be released in a week), its DRM scheme will hurt Ubisoft’s profits and generate more piracy. How does this fulfil the purpose of the DRM scheme?

As for me, I’m still hesitating, waiting for now. I have had a pre-order of AC2 for some time now, but I may cancel it in the coming couple of days. We’ll see how things progress.

All in all, though, this perfectly illustrates one problem: technical implementations of copyright restrictions are alienating users who would adhere to the original business model. Too much copyright, through DRM, kills copyright.

Patents

Let us now examine patents (pronounced “pah-tent”, not “pay-tent”, in the UK, notably to distinguish the adjective “patent” [as in "patently"] from the noun “patent” [as in "patents"]).

This analysis is once again based on English law (the Patents Act (PA) 1977).

Patents are a monopoly right given to commercially exploit an invention. In other words, with a patent, the owner has an exclusive right to make this product or carry out this process, to the exclusion of everyone else, even if someone else creates it without having copied from the owner.

Patents are granted after a procedure that involves publishing information about the product/process, and thus the theory goes that the monopoly right conferred by the patent is counterbalanced by the publication of this information.

However, this right has limitations, two of which are of great importance: if B has created such a product or employed such a process before the publication of A’s patent, B will still be allowed to continue doing what he/she did beforehand; also, if A gives a licence to B, B is allowed to exploit the invention.

The patent system is generally given a few justifications: it serves as a reward for innovation (you invent something and are given a monopoly as a reward), it serves to incentivise innovation (the monopoly allows a return on investment – this is slightly different from the “reward” justification), it is a natural right (inventors should have a right in their invention), it allows the sharing of information (the patent allows the publication of information that would perhaps not have been shared otherwise). While one can disagree with these justifications, the first two seem to be still very present today.

There is one field in which patents have been the focus of debates and controversies: biotechnology, and we shall examine certain of the issues here.

The question of the patentability of biotechnology came to the forefront only in the late eighties/early nineties, with the OncoMouse case, which concerned one of the first transgenic animals, a mouse whose genes were particularly susceptible to cancer.

Biotechnological inventions have been the target of specific regulation in Europe since the adoption (after a long history of parliamentary debates, revisions, …) of the Biotechnology Directive, which takes into account the lessons from the OncoMouse case and other, later cases.

Taking cue from the Howard Florey/Relaxin case, the Directive specifies the following in Article 5:

1. The human body, at the various stages of its formation and development, and the simple discovery of one of its elements, including the sequence or partial sequence of a gene, cannot constitute patentable inventions.

2. An element isolated from the human body or otherwise produced by means of a technical process, including the sequence or partial sequence of a gene, may constitute a patentable invention, even if the structure of that element is identical to that of a natural element.

In layman’s terms, the situation is the following: when one discovers a discrete segment of DNA that contains the information necessary for producing specific proteins, one can reproduce it synthetically. Does this amount to a discovery, or is in at invention that can be patented?

The answer for which the Biotechnology Directive provides is that any gene that is isolated and thus created separately can be patented. The technical intervention is the creation of the artificial molecule, and this allows patentability.

Can you see the logic behind this rule? The more I think about it, the less I understand it. It may make sense to allow the patenting of the process used to isolate a gene, but what could possibly justify issuing a patent for the isolate gene itself?

According to this logic, if A isolates gene Z using method 1, whenever B isolates Z using method 2 there will be infringement, despite the fact that Z already exists in nature.

The patenting of a gene or of a molecule existing already in the human body causes all sorts of other issues, notably regarding innovation. Indeed, if A obtains a patent on molecule Y, A can oppose any use of molecule Y. Yet in the case of pharmaceuticals, medicine and other such areas of practice, the use of molecules is the starting point for any research.

The patent system is often seen as an incentive to innovation, but this is then surely one area where it stifles innovation, as one has to obtain a licence for the use of a molecule before one can even start doing any research. If one sees the patent system as a method of rewarding innovation, does this not go too far?

Closing comments

To me, intellectual property is a good thing to have in the Western society in which I live (I have very strong reservations about the way Westerners try to force intellectual property upon developing countries, but that’s another matter). Copyright especially has a special place in my heart as an author and composer: I would dislike to see any works I do be attributed to someone else, for example.

However, the current systems of intellectual property have flaws.

Copyright, which once favoured the author, has gone to favour the producer/publisher, and the latter has decided that fighting piracy is a topmost priority, to the extent of alienating normal users. What is the Creative Commons movement if not an indication that copyright in the minds of creators goes too far?

Patents, which cover most products and processes, may also be seen as going too far in certain cases. The biotechnological sphere provides us with illustrations, but it is by no means the only one. Furthermore, in the EU, incremental inventions gain as much protection (if not more) as a pioneering invention.

One major issue in all of this is that complaining appears to be of no use. The USA adore IP rights, and so does the EU. Powerful lobbies seem to always push for more rights for the industry (whether the publishers/producers for copyright or the companies with huge Research & Development sections for patents). Will the community of world users and creators/inventors ever take back what they have lost to the industry?

But today, something strange happened: I had tears in my eyes upon reading the ending of another book, a newly discovered gem of literature.

Tears in my eyes! When faced with writing, the only time this has happened to me was while writing certain sections of the Arpia novel.

I must conclude that this book, which I found hard to set aside, has conquered my heart.

Its title? Scaramouche, by Rafael Sabatini (an Italian gentleman who wrote in English).

Its content? The tale of a young man who goes from the robe (lawyer) to the buskin (actor) to the sword (maître d’armes) around the period of the Révolution française.

Go read it. Now.

Our world is like a garden,
Eternally in blossom
The saplings grow,
The flowers bloom,
And no plant can be forgotten

They come in all colours and sizes,
A feast upon the eyes
As I walk among them,
As if in paradise,
It is I that each one mesmerises

At first glance all I see is beauty
Superficial and yet so true
I draw closer and see
What they shall live to be
And behold them in all their glory

It is like being close to a phoenix
Or an angel whose heart is pure
When they shine like the sun with goodness,
With a smile any ill they will cure

Between passion and admiration,
Both in doubt and feeling too sure,
I cannot help respecting and loving them,
These beings with the power to lure

What would the world be without them,
With no such treasure to discover?
If we live, if we die,
These words are no lie:
We exist to serve these women.

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.