EMERGING

EMERGING MARKETS:
A Review of Business and Legal Issues
technology casts doubt on the whole system of international law with its geographical
territoriality doctrine. For instance, a criminal being geographically situated in China or
Russian Federation can perpetrate a bank system in the U.S., or break the computer network
in France and send viruses to its users, or place information that contain child pornography on
the website that geographically is situated in Spain (let us also take into account that this site
can be accessed by the indefinite number of Internet user from different countries of the
world). In these examples that routinely take place in the virtual environment cybercriminals
possessing certain practical skill can perpetrate targets in other countries not even leaving
their homes. The offender and actual targets are separated by great distances, and the only
connection between them is the network that binds its users.
So what should be considered the place of perpetration of the cybercrime or, in other
words, how can we define its territorial element?
In general theory of Criminal Law a place of perpetration is understood as an objective
category that represents a basis for application of territorial jurisdiction of the state. The last
relies on the territorial supremacy of the state, which lies in its sole right to exercise
jurisdiction, including criminal jurisdiction, over its territory, if other is not provided in the
norms of International Law or in its international agreements. By general rule the place of
perpetration is defined as the territory where harmful activity took place and where harmful
consequences happened, or where accessories to a crime acted 1 . With regard to cybercrimes,
harmful actions and results frequently take place at the very least in two countries, which will
have an equal right to prosecute an illegal conduct (for example, a criminal cracks a server in
another country and steals personal information of its users) 2 . But it seems almost impossible
to identify a geographical place of perpetration in cases of computer viruses’ distribution 3 or
1 Blum M.I. Effect of Soviet Criminal Law in Space. – Riga, 1974. – P. 133.
2 In these fairly straight forwarded cases we do not take into account that a criminal might use Internet servers
that are geographically situated in the third countries for committing a crime.
3 For instance in 2000 notorious virus “ILOVEYOU” cloaked itself with an e-mail message and once opened
rapidly spread worldwide, causing billions of dollars in damage and halting corporate networks. Causing
damage to computer information of the victim it redirected Microsoft Internet Explorer surfers to a
predetermined website where a separate program scanned the victim’s computer for passwords and log-in
names. After this the virus sent a copy of itself to every name in the user’s address book, overloading computer
Page 86 Volume 1, April 2009