Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2021
Abstract
Access to information is the purpose of the Internet. Ask anyone born after the dawn of the information age; they will tell you that cyberspace is the place to go if one wants to know stuff. On the other hand, many of the people who put stuff on the Internet or on systems connected to the Internet will tell you that, without legal rights to control or block access, people will not have incentives to put on the Internet stuff that is worth knowing. In this tension between access and control, property is generally assumed to be on the side of control. But what Margaret Jane Radin called the “propertization” of information2 is not simply a process of making data less accessible. Property rights concern different relations between persons with respect to things. Some of those relations have nothing to do with exclusion, and many property rights do not necessarily entail a right to exclude. Property in fact serves a more comprehensive purpose. Familiar property concepts play a role in cyber law because they facilitate legal reasoning. And lawyers and judges have a practical need when resolving conflicts about access to and use of information. They need to resolve those disputes according to law. This essay briefly discusses how property concepts help them meet that need.
Recommended Citation
Adam J. MacLeod, Cyber Trespass and Property Concepts, 10 IP Theory 4 (2021).
