Law and Cybercrime in the United States Today

Abstract

American laws addressing cybercrime are shaped by the general structure of law in a federal state with common law courts. As cybercrime encompasses both general preexisting crime that is extended onto the Internet, as well as crimes that are specific to a twenty-first century world of networked computers, legal responses include the application of laws of general applicability as well as specific enactments aimed at crime on the Internet. To date, American efforts at dealing with Internet crime continue to be dominated by reactive legislation and responsive recasting of existing criminal law actions to deal with crimes such as unauthorized access, fraud, obscenity, child pornography, and copyright infringement. Accession to the Convention on Cybercrime has seen the enactment of provisions aimed at meeting commitments thereunder. However, a systematic approach to cybercrime is still at a nascent stage. CR - Copyright © 2010 American Society of Comparative Law