The Internet, the law, and privacy in New Zealand: Dignity with liberty?

Abstract

Early participants in the Internet experienced very little legal or social pressure with respect to either data privacy or regulation. However, the innovations of Web 2.0 are symptomatic of a re-creation of cyberspace from an original “free for all,” in which websites had no normative constraints, toward a significant shift to website management that addresses privacy concerns. If the laws of the non-virtual world are difficult to apply to the online world, must the non-virtual world create new laws to control the online world? Should a balance be made between laws of the non-virtual and virtual worlds, or should a new set of laws be created specifically to govern the Internet? Concordant with this dilemma is the issue that although precedent may create new laws, when the law changes with the possibilities for uses and abuses of new online technologies, to what extent can it be said to either perpetuate or create to any internally consistent system?