Vol 7 No 1 - Roger Williams University School of Law

desirable to sellers and buyers alike. Moreover, consumerswithout access to the Internet will miss not merely onlineshopping opportunities, but also access to the mass of sometimesedifying information available on the Web.This problem has at least two related facets: who will haveaccess to technology and what specific means of access may theylegitimately employ? Policymakers have labeled the formerproblem of unequal access to technology the “Digital Divide.”1Indeed, this issue has been with us for so many years that theterm “Digital Divide” has grown in the collective consciousness toa point where it is almost passé. Nevertheless, unequal access toInternet technology will remain a concern in the near future andinequalities may grow for some time rather than shrink. Even ifpolicymakers could solve the problem of unequal opportunity toaccess the Internet, what technology would the formerlydisenfranchised or even the Internet-savvy use? As technologymarches on, the question of who will have access to the bettertechnology, like broadband, arises.While almost everyone is familiar with at least some of theissues the “Digital Divide” raises, fewer may know about an accessdebate currently raging in the United States. That debate focuseson who may link to a Website and how they may do so. In recentmonths, certain popular sites have begun to employ an ancienttort, trespass to chattels, in an attempt to regulate access to theirsites. Depending on how courts finally resolve such claims, theuse of trespass to chattels to regulate access to sites could hamperthe emergence of the Internet as a market that approaches perfectcompetition and promises significant benefits for consumers.The following discussion addresses problems of access. Itdiscusses some parts of the debate over the “Digital Divide” andaccess to broadband technologies. It then reviews some of thecaselaw on access to Websites and proposes an approach toresolving such questions.A. Problems of Access Generally—The Digital DivideCommentators have thoroughly documented the “Digital1. Report of the Digital Opportunity Task Force, Digital Opportunities for All:Meeting the Challenge, at 3 (May 11, 2001), available athttp://www.glocom.ac.jp/dotforce/final/DOTForceReportv50g.pdf.