TITLE

Law and the Information Superhighway: Privacy; Access; Intellectual Property; Commerce; Liability.

AUTHOR(S) SURNAME, FORENAME

Perritt, Henry H Jr

Places & Countries of PUBLISHERS    YEAR
Publication

New York, NY, USA        John Wiley & Sons, Inc    1996

PAGES    ISBN        BINDING    PRICE

xxiii+730    0-471-12624-1    Hbk    £105

The author takes as his model the highway on which vehicles run. He then draws parallels with the laws that exist or should exist to control information on the information superhighway. The strength of this book is the author's understanding of information technology. We do not feel comfortable with legal analysis that is based on second hand or passed on IT knowledge - that is not so here. However there are still two limitations. We are short of statute and case law directly relevant to information technology practices. Secondly the author writes almost wholly on US law under the US Constitution. This means that while the work is of some value in other common laws countries it is less so in civil law countries although there are pointers of interest as the Treaty of Rome takes on the shape of a Constitution for the European Community.

There is no doubt that this work is important over the wide background it covers. It cannot discuss issues such as we find in the chapters of other books we review but it does help to have these issues in context. The publisher intends to issue supplements to the work and in our view these supplements will be of considerable value to the practitioner who wishes to keep abreast of legal thinking, especially if his work covers activities within US jurisdiction.

            23.8.96    4494

Converted using Wp2Html from Andrew Scriven. Copyright Cliff Dilloway on the last date above. The Authors Moral Rights are asserted