Information Technology and the Law (Honours), Edinburgh Law School

The aim of this course is to respond to the immense impact computers and the Internet are having, firstly, on substantive law, and, secondly, on the legal process and the nature of law. "Computer law" has developed since the Seventies from a patchwork of specialist applications of ordinary rules of contract, criminal law etc to a rapidly growing specialist cognate discipline. It has now expanded to embrace (or be subsumed by) the emergent field of legal regulation of the Internet. The course intends to examine the legal ramifications of computerisation and the Internet, including topics such as e-commerce, intellectual property in software and hardware, privacy rights in relation to electronic information, content liability, censorship and freedom of expression on the Internet, computer crime etc. Themes relevant throughout the course will be discussed such as globalisation, trans-jurisdictionality, enforcement issues, regulatory forms (including self-regulation and soft law) and the competing lobbies for consumers, corporations, industry players, rights-holders and cyber-libertarians. Sources will be drawn from the legal systems of Scotland, England, the UK, the US, the EC and Australia.

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