I came across this topic when I was having an open discussion in my school. We were discussion if the use of law is able to solve all technological problems upon the uprising technology advancement. I find this an interesting topic for us to be aware of the Laws around us in the use of IT and its technologies. Meanwhile I could also use some examples what you guys may provide when this topic is discussed again next week in my school. Anyway this is what I think.. I think the presence of Law may deal a certain level of feedback to offenders. However it certainly cannot stop because there is always someone out there on this planet trying to destroy some networks to achieve and steal stuffs for just being greedy. Worst still, they do it without any objectives, or plainly for the fun of it.. So what's your views? Is the use of law able to solve all technological problems? Any examples?

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Law cannot solve all the problems since Justice DeLay'd is Justice Denied as the saying goes. I wonder how many of the webmasters have got justice for others copying their websites and so on and so forth.

So also many people are using free content management systems built in php programmes and others are being stolen when users removed copyrights in meta or footer as required by the GNU.... there is GNU which should be referred as LAW protecting the rights of the coder but how far this can cover to the violators... since many sites are still running for years without copyright in footer or in head - meta tags as required by the software copyright.

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The problem with law on the Internet is that everyone is governed by the laws in the country they are in at that time. On the Internet there is a wide mix of people from all across the world, and they each have their own laws.

For example, here in Britain anything you create, type, draw or say is immediately copyright to yourself, whether you put a notice on it or not. However, in other countries you have to put a notice clearly visible on the work, or even register it, in the same way as a patent.

What may be legal for someone is illegal for someone else, and as it is very hard to tell exactly who anyone is on the Internet it can be difficult to prove that anyone has done anything illegal.

Also, as you are faceless on the Internet, there is nothing to identify you except an IP address. If you're behind a proxy or have a dynamic IP it can be very hard to trace it to a specific computer, and then there is no proof as to who was using the computer at the time.

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Yes, it's very hard because you never know who the 'criminal' is, or where they are from. Like you said, laws are different everywhere, so that kind of hinders the process of punishing people, because the offender has to be doing something against the law in the place they are from.

And even if there are laws that cover everything, you know that some people aren't going to care and break the rules anyway, other people will be ignorant of the law and not realize that they are breaking it, and some other people will look at the laws as a challenge and devise up a way to get around it.

I don't think no matter how many laws you make regarding technology (especially in the internet world, because it is always changing) that you will ever really be able to stop criminals from doing what they do best - breaking the law.

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..personally, I'm not much for laws in general. It seems like rules are made to be broken. And since you can never get everyone to agree on the laws.. even the most basic and common-sense type of laws have someone out there who doesn't agree.. and that's just one country. By the time you factor in something global like IT.. we might as well just give up on trying to make and enforce laws.

Ah, what a pain.. a couple of bad apples always ruin everything for the rest of us.. ^^;

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