Welcome to LawShelf’s video-course on cyberlaw. This course focuses on a variety of legal topics as they relate to online communications, agreements and transactions. While this is an introductory-level course, a little background in contract, tort and freedom of speech law is recommended as the course touches on all these areas but does not have the time to comprehensively introduce each area of law.

We will start with a discussion of jurisdiction, which is the study of which states and laws have authority over which parties. This is especially important in cyberlaw issues because transactions and communications often happen between parties in different states and different countries. We will also discuss the enforceability of agreements between the parties to settle the case in a given state or through arbitration and the enforceability of judgments across state lines.

Module 2 is devoted to intellectual property and the unique copyright, trademark, patent and trade secret issues that are caused by e-commerce and online publications.

In Module 3, we turn to criminal law and cybercrime. We will look at various criminal statutes that deal with Internet crimes and at constitutional limitations of freedom of speech and freedom of unreasonable searched and seizures that limit the government’s ability to investigate and prosecute alleged online criminal activity.

The last two modules turn to civil law and torts that are frequently committed online. We will look at invasion of privacy torts, defamation torts and torts that inflict emotional distress. We will also discuss a litany of possible defense to these actions, including those based on constitutional protections and common law and statutory privileges. We will also touch on laws designed to discourage “strategic lawsuits against public participation” and other issues particularly relevant to online communications and sales.

At the end of this course, we hope that you will have a better understanding of the legal landscape that applies to the Internet and online communications.

 Best of luck and we welcome your feedback.