Brett J. Trout - Cyber Law: A Legal Arsenal for Online Business

Cyber Law: A Legal Arsenal for Online Business

by

Brett J. Trout, P.C.

ISBN 978-1-934209-71-4

10-digit ISBN 1-934209-72-1

$17.99

2007 Brett J. Trout

303 Park Avenue South, #1440

New York, NY 10010-3657

Edited by

Kyle D. Torke

Original cover art by Ron Wagner (http://www.rjwagner.com)

Book design by and layout by Christopher Taylor (http://www.100percentcreative.com)

C opyright notice: All work contained within is the sole copyright of the author, 2007, and may not be reproduced without consent.

World Audience (. Thank you.

Cyber Law: A Legal Arsenal for Online Business

by

Brett J. Trout

A World Audience Book

(www.worldaudience.org)

September, 2007

New York, Newcastle (NSW, Australia)

Dedicated to Lindy and Griffin

Hoppa polla

W ith great thanks, I acknowledge the editorial input of my legal assistant Sharon Janes, without whom this project could not have been completed. I would also like to acknowledge the scrupulous editorial efforts of Kyle Torke and Martha Boesen in adding a fine polish to my work. Any errors or omissions, however, are solely my own.

CONTENTS

Introduction...........................................................................................7

Chapter One..........................................................................................9

Chapter Two........................................................................................17

Chapter Three.......................................................................................43

Chapter Four.........................................................................................47

Chapter Five........................................................................................51

Chapter Six...........................................................................................69

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................83

Chapter Eight........................................................................................85

Chapter Nine.........................................................................................89

Chapter Ten.........................................................................................93

Chapter Eleven.....................................................................................97

Chapter Twelve....................................................................................105

Chapter Thirteen..................................................................................111

Chapter Fourteen..................................................................................119

Chapter Fifteen....................................................................................125

Chapter Sixteen....................................................................................131

Chapter Seventeen.................................................................................137

Chapter Eighteen.................................................................................141

Chapter Nineteen.................................................................................147

Appendix A.........................................................................................153

Appendix B........................................................................................159

Appendix C........................................................................................165

Appendix D.......................................................................................169

Appendix E.........................................................................................171

Appendix F........................................................................................173

Glossary............................................................................................179

Index................................................................................................183

INTRODUCTION

I nternet law grows at least ten times faster than most other areas of law. By the time you read An Internet Arsenal , most of the internet laws I describe will be different or at least subject to new interpretation. Collecting materials for An Internet Arsenal over the last decade, what I find most interesting is not where internet law is, but how different regulations, practices, and standard guidelines emerged. Although most internet laws affecting your company are federal in nature, the relative newness of Internet legislation leaves many gaps in the legislative landscape. States fill these gaps with an overlapping collage of various state and common laws. Given the mix of federal, state, and common laws, determining which laws apply to a particular transaction can be complicated. An online contract between companies in California and New York, executed through a server in Colorado, supplied by a vendor in Nevada to a retailer in Georgia, for example, can offer especially vexing problems.

The mercurial nature of the online legal landscape contributes to the confusion. New Internet laws are pending every day. What is the Law of the Internet today will not be the Law of the Internet tomorrow. A snapshot of the law may be fine for a relatively well-defined, slowly evolving area of the law, but not for internet law. Internet law evolves so quickly, a snapshot is really just a historical record of where internet law settled for a moment before moving forward. A snapshot can only show what internet law is not. Instantly out of date, such a snapshot provides no clue about where internet law is today or where the law is headed tomorrow. The landscape is not barren, however, and An Internet Arsenal provides a unique stratagem for considering and configuring your internet legal needs.

A better approach to grasping and holding on to the intricacy of the legal landscape is to examine how various areas of internet law have evolved over time and how the evolution mirrors and/or deviates from the way other areas of law have developed. A little background not only allows legal advisors to extrapolate where the law likely is today, but where regulations, policies, and rulings might be tomorrow, next month, or even next year.

An Internet Arsenal presents what internet law was like in the pastthe recent past, but the past nonetheless. You can use this book in two ways. One way is to use the issues An Internet Arsenal raises to spot concerns and make decisions based upon what the internet law was in the recent past.

Another, better, way to use this book is to find themes and trends in the areas of internet law of particular interest to your company. While the rapid evolution of internet law makes pinpointing difficult, the quick changes make patterns easier to recognize. From these patterns, you can formulate some educated guesses as to where a particular law is headed and plan accordingly. While there is no guarantee your guess will be right, over time the odds are that you will much better positioned than others in your industry who are making decisions based upon analyses of the law already a year or more out of date.

Keep An Internet Arsenal close at hand. Refer to its chapters frequently. Make notes in the margin of changes in your industry and patterns you see developing. Use the language and examples as an informational roadmap for your business. Identify small issues early and enlist your attorney to prevent them from becoming large problems. Stay informed about changes in they law. Add them to your store of knowledge and use them to identify patterns and build a new map for your companys future.