Legal Acts Administration Guidelines

Development team • Planning • Support • Testing • Staging • Cutting new releases • Fallback • System administration will be easier if more computing policies are covered and elaborated internally and if more of the corresponding procedures are specified. It sounds strange, but less freedom in doing something usually makes the job easier. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately this is mostly the case only for large communities with strong IT departments that have been running for years. The majority of medium−size and small companies do not have, or have only rudimentary, specified procedure. The system administrator often does have freedom in enforcing listed policies. This freedom in action increases the administrators responsibility, but also enhances the creativity in the work that is why we used the word fortunately earlier.

1.4.3 Administration Guidelines

This section provides some additional system administration−related information.

1.4.3.1 Legal Acts

Computer network and UNIX are quite young, but they have significantly affected all spheres of human life. Today the Internet is strongly pushing ahead to replace, or at least to alter, many traditional pieces of economic infrastructures: the telecommunication industry, the entertainment industry, the publishing industry, the financial industry, postal services, and others. All kinds of middleman services, such as travel agencies, job agencies, book sellers, and music retainers, are also dramatically changing. Business−to−business B2B links are growing, providing an efficient mechanism to merge customers and merchants and make our online shopping easier. The full list of all affected businesses would be very, very long. Such a huge area of human activities also opened up possibilities for misuse, fraud, theft, and other kinds of crimes. While the technological and financial capabilities have fully supported booming information technologies, legal infrastructure seems to stay far below our real needs. In many cases even when the perpetrator is caught, actual conviction is very difficult under the current laws. Recent cases involving very destructive viruses that cost businesses millions of dollars stayed in limbo even though the perpetrators were known. The case against Napster Music Community, relating to music copyrights, was closed after a long time and was only partially successful. A t t h i s m o m e n t w e h a v e o n l y a f e w l e g a l a c t s i n t h i s a r e a , c o v e r i n g o n l y s e v e r a l computer−crime−related topics, and sometimes those not even effectively. Definitely they do not constitute a sufficient legal framework, and further improvements and expansions are necessary. The existing legal acts are: The Federal Communication Privacy Act • The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act • 22 The Digital Millenium Copyright Act • A pending problem in the implementation of the listed legal acts, as well as others that will presumably come in the future, lies in the fact that even if the corresponding laws exist in the United States, they do not exist in many other countries. Because of the global nature of the Internet and its presence in countries worldwide, it is very difficult to enforce any court decision.

1.4.3.2 Code of Ethics