ABSTRACT
When the information revolution became apparent in the 1990s, two suggestions about the regulatory powers of states in cyberspace prevailed. Normatively, it was suggested that cyberspace was a space of new freedom where state regulations should not be as extensive as they were in real space.1 As a matter of fact, it was suggested that the regulations of states could not function in the way they did in real space, because of the physical difference between the two.2 The second suggestion had important implications for rules of jurisdiction in public international law. The most remarkable physical difference between cyberspace and real space is the borderless environment of the former, and the rules of jurisdiction in the latter have always been closely linked to the concept of territory. Therefore, they became the most difficult issue as a result of the information revolution.3 The purpose of this
chapter is to verify whether or not rules of jurisdiction that were developed before the information revolution are still used in cyber-context today. If there are changes in these rules, then the distribution of states’ regulatory powers in cyberspace is different from that in real space: the rules of jurisdiction are the rules of allocation of states’ regulatory powers on the international plane. In this chapter, two categories of rules of jurisdiction will be examined, namely, rules found in general international law, and rules found in treaties.
