Perspective: A Cyberspace Update For Hoary Legal Doctrine

Reprinted with permission from CNet.com.

The ancient legal doctrine of trespass to chattels establishes liability when one person dispossesses or causes physical harm to the chattel (private property) of another person.

What does that doctrine have to do with conduct in cyberspace? Quite a lot, actually.

Information technology development continues to advance at an astonishing pace, and with the law evolving at a much slower rate, traditional legal theories have had to be dusted off to grapple with Internet disputes. The best example is the application by the courts of the trespass to chattels notion to the new world of the Internet.

Some of the first Internet trespass cases involved unsolicited commercial e-mail (aka spam). For example, in the Compuserve v. Cyber Promotions case, the court sustained an Internet service provider's claims of trespass against a spammer who sent bulk e-mail spam to the ISP's members.