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January 15, 2001

The Big Picture:
Crime Is Crime, Online Or Off

We can't excuse crimes just because they happen in cyberspace

Leon A. Kappelman e don't really get IT. Despite the "E-ification" of commerce, finance, government, and just about everything else, the collective "we" doesn't yet seem to understand how IT changes some things and not others. Oh, sure, some do get IT better than others, but most barely understand IT at all.

Indeed, we've realized that IT makes our economy more productive. But the fact that more than three-quarters of companies can't demonstrate that their IT investments make them even $1 more profitable strongly suggests that IT most often isn't being managed very well.

Strangely, bursting the E-stock bubble is a sign that we're understanding IT. Those who collectively lost hundreds of billions of dollars on companies with no earnings and barely any cash flow obviously didn't get IT. Maybe they do a bit more now. Sadly, their pain probably isn't over yet.

Just because the Internet makes communication easier, it doesn't make the physical reality of obtaining and shipping goods or the red tape of dealing with customs much easier, and it certainly doesn't repeal the basic rules of good investing. Many of these E-companies started with bad business models and didn't think them through.

Apparently, neither did many of their stockholders. So if you're hoping to see a parade of dot-com commercials in this year's Super Bowl broadcast, forget it.

To be sure, the law and the courts need to understand and catch up with the effects of IT, too. It's often a matter of finding a new balance. If, from the anonymity of a crowd, someone throws a bottle at you and breaks your arm, shouldn't that person be charged with criminal battery and sued for damages? Would a jury seriously consider the argument that the bottle thrower was merely exercising his or her right to free speech? Criminality aside, is it any different if someone injures you with lies from the anonymity of an Internet chat room?

Such anonymous "cybersmears" have led to a gaggle of "John Doe" lawsuits. No doubt, there should be some guarantees of anonymity in online chat rooms, but not at the cost of protecting those who choose to shout "fire" in a cybertheater, fraudulently affect the price of a stock, or libelously injure others with E-lies.

So, three cheers for the U.S. District judge who recently awarded a physician $675,000 in damages from another doctor who posted libelous statements about him on a Yahoo message board. As for those who defend cybersmearing as free speech, would you argue otherwise if you were the target of libelous, anonymous E-attacks?

Yes, anonymity should be protected, but we also need some clear rules as to under what circumstances courts can compel Internet service providers, portals, and others to reveal the identities of those who said something criminal or injurious via the Internet. A good starting point is that if it's illegal in physical space, then it's also illegal in cyberspace.

If E-fraud, E-stock manipulation, E-theft of money, and E-trespassing are crimes as they are in the physical world, then shouldn't the theft of intellectual property via the Internet--or via any other medium, for that matter--also be a crime? With all due respect to our legal system, it seems that to argue that E-theft isn't really theft is about as correct as arguing that sex isn't sex.

Knowledge is the foundation upon which the viability of the information age, E-commerce, E-government, and our digital economy depends. This intellectual capital often takes the form of copyrighted E-property that we call programs, data, and digital versions of books, photographs, musical performances, and other such creations.

And just because 40 million Napster users don't want to pay for their copies of the copyrighted property of others doesn't make it ethical or legal. And, it's hoped, neither will Napster's hiring Al Gore's chief lawyer, David Boies, and Republican chief council of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Manus Cooney.

Do you remember the "don't copy that floppy" campaign? Other than the medium and the magnitude, is file sharing or data trading via the likes of Napster any different?

When is a crime not a crime? Never. Let's hope we don't get IT wrong.

Professor Leon A. Kappelman is director of the Information Systems Research Center in the College of Business Administration at the University of North Texas. You can reach him at kapp@unt.edu or on the Web at www.coba.unt.edu/bcis/faculty/kappelma.

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