Saturday, June 27, 2026 Strategy, technology, media, and social systems

I Think

Sorin Adam Matei

Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.

April 16, 2010

Internet is no extraterrestrial entity

An Irish judge asks legal systems everywhere to implement intellectual laws and to reject online piracy. He reprimands those who believe that cyberspace is an autonomous territory with its own copyright laws.

“The Internet is only a means of communication,” he wrote. “It is not an amorphous extraterrestrial body with an entitlement to norms that run counter to the fundamental principles of human rights. There is nothing in the criminal or civil law which legalizes that which is otherwise illegal simply because the transaction takes place over the Internet.”