Law and Internet: Essays on Theory and Practice

The present study considers a number of problems in the legal regulation of public relations employing Internet in Russian Federation.

While working over the book except tasks of research a goal was set to give a reference character to a part of its materials and, also, to create a system of legal advices that after their inevitable adaptation could be used by used by subjects of the relations in their activity employing Internet.

This study is pointed to the legal regulation of Internet in Russia but as materials for the analysis were also taken the foreign Internet legislation and real court practice. In the same time, an attempt was entertained to consider in the study the broad initiatives in self-regulation of public relations using information technologies and Internet that have proved to be very successful in the West.

The book takes for subject of analysis the key problems of Internet jurisdiction and responsibility of intermediate providers, problems in publication of mass information and spam. This book touches, also, the problem of personal data protection while working in Internet, problems are studied of copyright protection and the domain name status is analyzed.

The book makes a review of initiatives in regulation of Internet in Russia and, also, in appropriate sections, real Russian court practice is considered, dealing, in the first place, with infringement of rights on intellectual property in Internet and the status of evidences, obtained by Internet, in domestic court precedents in studied.

While working over the book a number of important problems of Internet use regulation were left beyond its scope, such as interconnections of networks and protection of industrial property objects; were not specially considered relations in the field of electronic commerce (bargain negotiation, taxation and Internet payments), customer rights protection and advertising in Internet, was not substantially studied the electronic circulation of documents.

In the final section of the book a methodology is given for the legal support of the information project in Internet and developed on its base regulations and rules for use of a number of available domestic network projects.

There were included in the appendix: a short review of Russian legislation in the field of information technologies and telecommunication up to 2001, tests of two of the most successful Russian initiatives in self-regulation, texts of domestic court judgments passed from the middle of 1999 to beginning of 2002 on litigations resulting from infringement of exclusive rights to the means of identity by registration and use of domain names and, also, copyright infringement in use of Internet.

Most of materials are given in Russian but the appendix contains an sample review in English of Russian legal practice dedicated to use of Internet in Russia.

The book's structure is built on a number of separate essays, in which framework theoretic and practical problems are considered, what makes possible to be acquainted with studied legal Internet problems, picking out interesting ones and leaving out information having no practical interest for a reader.

The book is intended for lawyers, students of legal departments, managers of entities of all kids of property, analysts in the field of information technologies, state employees, having interest in or being in service concerning the problems of Internet development in Russia or abroad.

Victor B. Naumov