Information Technology Law (3rd ed.)

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2001), "Information Technology Law (3rd ed.)", Library Review, Vol. 50 No. 3, pp. 146-159. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2001.50.3.146.13

The emerging importance of IT and computer law shows in the growing numbers of works in the field. The first edition of this book was written in 1993 and since that time IT law and intellectual property rights debates have moved increasingly to centre stage for information professionals. Now, in a world where database and software use, licences and contracts, ISPs and Internet deliverables, unpoliceable infringement, and information liability are all commonplace challenges, the need to have up‐to‐date discussions like Lloyd’s third edition is very real indeed.

Lloyd is Professor of IT Law and Director of the Centre for Law, Computers and Technology at the University of Strathclyde. He sets many of the key issues within a confident and relevant setting of the information society and its increasing global character and legal tendencies. This is a book which both defines and describes the law and takes the reader through an engaging discussion of the principles and interpretations that need to be confronted. There are broad issues like privacy and surveillance, taking us into recent developments in data protection, their trans‐border implications, and their fit with telecommunications and e‐commerce (such as in areas like direct marketing). Lloyd takes us surely through the minefield of computer theft and misuse, providing legislation and case law as the “legal response”, providing a first‐rate discussion of “theft” where “intangible” information is concerned, and linking the whole thing to confidentiality and borrowing. There is a concise and to‐the‐point discussion about computer pornography, the law and how far pseudo‐photographs and Internet applications (like transient images) are pushing at traditional definitions of harm and liability. Even the prosecution of computer crime is redefining the nature of evidence, as evolving case law shows.

Another particularly useful strand of the book is the one on intellectual property. Covering patents, trade marks and copyright, Lloyd’s discussion of the patentability of software (which copyright law defines as a protectable literary work) is fascinating and useful, pointing out the critical legal distinction of “technical effect” (going beyond the “normal” physical interactions between program and hardware), and differentiating copyrightable software from “mental acts” (like expert systems) which have traditionally been grounds for rejection as patentable. Like Lai and Bainbridge and others in this field, Lloyd picks up on literal and non‐literal copying, on “look and feel” protectability and the crucial role in the courts of the Altai test for software. Then there are databases, where law has been led along by Europe and where the working relationship between copyright and sui generis provisions still needs to be worked through in practice. For information professionals thinking they are less bothered about trade marks, there is the whole dilemma about domain names, their role and protection against cyber‐squatters, their protectability as compilations and the scope of the “sweat of brow” criterion. Recent cases (like Lexis and Jurisline) suggest that will run and run. Sui generis also applies to semiconductor chips and has an interesting parallel with design rights.

Increasing attention, too, has to be given to information liability, say, for defective software, and to a proper understanding of contracts and licences. The proliferation of contracts and the growing trend towards professional negligence suits suggest more awareness of these issues, the more clients see themselves as customers. Many information liability cases proceed by analogy but, as time goes by, information liability cases will grow. Product liability, say for software, and no fault liability, has important links with consumer law. Then, finally, there is the area of e‐commerce and electronic signatures and encryption. Lloyd analyses the implications of the Electronic Communications Act 2000 and Electronic Signatures Directive 2000 with clarity, pointing to the viewpoints of stakeholders for whom the practical issues have only just begun. The book ends with defamation (which I would have placed earlier on with privacy perhaps or confidentiality), an unexpectedly sudden end to a very useful book.

There is no doubt that this third edition will pass naturally into any self‐respecting collection, institutional or personal, where computer, IT, or intellectual property law is studied, or where information practitioners want a reliable guide to what is happening in the field, a work which spreads its net wider than say Wall or Cornish, those practical guides to information professionals. And, like the end of a good conversation, it’s a book which you find yourself starting again once you’ve finished it.