ABSTRACT
Cyberspace is more fundamentally intractable in regard to determining the applicable legal constraints on this activity: the geographical borders – lines separating physical spaces that define law-making power in the ordinary sense – are not, and cannot be made, operative on the global network. Cyberspace, however, does not merely weaken the significance of physical location, it destroys it in three distinct senses. Hamilton is already making his presence felt on the net in calls for increasing harmonization of rules governing conduct in this new environment. The defendant, America Online, is, of course, a large commercial online service provider. Like most online service providers, America Online offers a service to its subscribers – the ability to receive, and to send, electronic mail, not merely to other America Online subscribers but over the Internet – a 'gateway' between the closed America Online system and the open, worldwide Internet.
