ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights two groups of reasons why victims of cybercrime are overlooked by the criminal law. First, and perhaps most surprisingly to many readers, victims and their harms are at best of only marginal interest to the criminal law. Second, core features of criminal law doctrine are conceptually incompatible with recognizing and adjudicating cybercrimes. The chapter describes features of the criminal law in virtue of which victims in general and the harms that they suffer are not of central concern to the criminal law. The comparative ease with which anonymity can be secured on the internet, and the impermanence of online evidence, also presents steep challenges to securing criminal convictions. Drawing on contemporary work in Anglo-American jurisprudence, the chapter highlights key features of the notions of "crime" and "criminal law". A way in which victims are marginalized by the criminal law can be gleaned by comparing it to civil litigation.
