Newsletter
JURISDICTION OVER CYBER-CRIME
Crimes committed via computer networks are often transnational in nature, and this frequently leads to disputes over the jurisdiction of judicial agencies. The Taiwan High Court recently held, in two cases involving the sale via the Internet of protected animal species and prohibited drugs, that jurisdiction lies with public prosecutors' of-fices and courts within whose territorial juris-diction the web page and/or e-mail hosts and servers involved in the transmission of data re-lated to the Internet crime are situated. In other words, in addition to the traditional determina-tion of jurisdiction according to the location of the actors or of the computers on which web pages are hosted, judicial agencies should also consider other specific matters, such as the loca-tion of computers storing web pages or e-mail used in the transmission of data, and of actual transactions, to make an overall judgment as to jurisdiction. Although broader than the tradi-tional determination of jurisdiction, the Taiwan High Court's view is stricter than that previously taken by the Taipei District Court in another case, in which it held that a court has jurisdiction in such cases if its territorial jurisdiction extends to any location from which the Internet may be accessed and the relevant data or advertisements may be obtained from web pages stored thereon.