Desarrollos recientes sobre Cyberlaw (derecho de la Internet) en los EE.UU.
| Autor | David P. Stewart |
| Páginas | 113-131 |
https://doi.org/10.18800/agenda.201801.006
Agenda Internacional
Año XXV N° 36, 2018, pp. 113-131
ISSN 1027-6750
Recent Developments in U.S. Cyberlaw
David P. Stewart*
A
is article surveys recent developments in domestic U.S. law relating to key issues in Internet
(or Cyber) Law. Rapid technological advances have posed serious challenges to traditional
legal doctrines and approaches relating to (for example) fundamental issues of privacy, free-
dom of speech and expression, and protection against unwarranted governmental intrusion.
How has the law responded to these key challenges? Since the United States lacks a compre-
hensive legislative structure addressing these issues, most of the recent developments have
come in the form of judicial decisions.
Keywords: Cyberlaw, Internet Regulation, Freedom of Access, Privacy, Data Protection,
Freedom of Speech and Expression, Right to Anonymity, Law Enforcement.
Desarrollos recientes sobre Cyberlaw (derecho de la Internet) en los EE.UU.
R
Este artículo analiza los desarrollos recientes en la legislación interna de los EE.UU. relacio-
nados con cuestiones clave en el Derecho de la Internet (o Cyberlaw). Los rápidos avances
tecnológicos han planteado serios desafíos a las doctrinas y enfoques legales tradicionales rela-
cionados (por ejemplo) con cuestiones fundamentales sobre privacidad, libertad de expresión,
y la protección contra la intromisión gubernamental injusticada. ¿Cómo ha respondido
la ley a estos desafíos clave? Dado que Estados Unidos carece de una estructura legislativa
integral que aborde estos temas, la mayoría de los recientes desarrollos se han presentado en
forma de decisiones judiciales.
Palabras clave: Cyberlaw, regulación de Internet, libertad de acceso, privacidad, protección de
datos, libertad de expresión, derecho al anonimato, aplicación de la ley.
* Professor from Practice, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C. Email: stewartd@law.georgetown.
edu. Former member, Inter-American Juridical Committee (2008-2016); President, American Branch, International
Law Association.
114 David P. Stewart
Agenda Internacional, XXV (36) 2018
Signicant advancements in technology have always presented legal challenges, but
perhaps none as dicult as those created by the rapid revolution in information
exchange and data sharing on the Internet. e legislatures and courts in the United
States, as in other countries, have struggled to respond by applying traditional prin-
ciples to new situations. is article provides an overview of relevant domestic law
and discusses some of the most important recent developments in and challenges to
that law.
e term «Internet Law» (or «Cyberlaw» as it is sometimes called) refers broadly to
the legal issues related to the regulation and use of the Internet for a wide variety
of purposes (private, commercial, governmental). It is less a distinct eld of law
than a conglomeration of rules from other areas (for example, contract, tort, intel-
lectual property, law enforcement, etc.) in their application to new situations. But
it also encompasses fundamental questions of individual rights. Consider, by way of
example, the following questions recently addressed by U.S. courts.
• Do individuals have a right to access the Internet freely? Put dierently, when
—if ever— can the government properly restrict such access? In a recent deci-
sion, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a North Carolina statute that prohib-
ited convicted sex oenders—including those no longer on probation, parole,
or supervised release—from accessing social media sites on the Internet. e
statute made it a felony for a registered sex oender to access a commercial social
networking Web site when the sex oender knows that the site permits minor
children to become members or to create or maintain personal Web pages. e
Court held that the law violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
because it was «not narrowly tailored to serve the State’s legitimate interest in
protecting minors from sexual abuse.»1
• Can the government compel disclosure of cell phone usage in order to determine
the past location of criminal suspects? e question is whether police ocers
must rst obtain prior judicial permission («warrants») to obtain data on the
past locations of criminal suspects based upon cellphone use. Under the Fourth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which protects against unreasonable
searches and seizures), the courts have long recognized a distinction between
the content of personal communications (which is protected) and the external
information («meta-data») necessary to get those communications from point
1 Packingham v. North Carolina, U.S., 137 S.Ct. 1730 at 1734–35 (June 19, 2017). Some years earlier, the Court
decided that the police generally may not, without a warrant, search digital information on a cell phone incident
to an arrest. Riley v. California, U.S., 134 S.Ct. 2473 (2014). See Commonwealth v. Mauricio, 477 Mass. 588, 80
N.E.3d 318 (Sup. Jud. Ct. Mass. 2017) (applying the principles in Riley to warrantless searches of digital cameras),
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