High Court of Australia

A new rule for a unique technology: In response to the suggestion that similar questions have existed at least since telegraph and international shortwave radio and that such potential liability is a commonplace in the world of global television distributed by satellite, the appellant pointed to the peculiarities of Internet publication. Viewed in one way, the Internet is not simply an extension of past communications technology. It is a new means of creating continuous relationships in a manner that could not previously have been contemplated. According to this view, the Internet is too flexible a structure to be controlled by a myriad of national laws, purportedly applied with no more justification than is provided by the content of such laws, usually devised long before the Internet arrived. For stored information, accessible in cyberspace, the new technology was said to demand a new approach. This would be true as much for the law of taxation, commercial transactions and other areas, as for the law of defamation.