Irish law and computer crime.

spod

This is kind of a follow up to the Is portscanning legal thread.

Seemingly the main piece of Irish law on computer crime is the criminal damage act, 1991. ( http://www.bailii.org/ie/legis/num_act/cda1991117/ )

from: http://www.ncirl.ie/itlaw/webcrime.html

The Irish law on computer crime remains The Criminal Damage Act, 1991. This sets out four offences: causing damage to data, threatening to damage data, the offence of possession of anything with intent to cause damage to data and unauthorised access to a computer. The penalties for committing any of the first three offences can range up to £10,000 and ten years in prison. If someone gains unauthorised access to a computer, he will be liable on summary conviction to a fine of up to £500 and/or imprisonment not exceeding three months. There are a variety of other offences which might apply these are supposed to be updated in a new Fraud Act which has yet to appear in Bill form. There are also offences under the Data Protection Act 1988.

http://www.ncirl.ie/itlaw/ has some general information on computer crime in Ireland.

In print, see Denis Kelleher and Karen Murray, Information Technology Law in
Ireland (Butterworths, Dublin, 1997)

General information on Irish law is at http://www.irish-law.org

Got this information from Darius Whelan, a Lecturer in Law in dit.


Now, there's just the areas of intellectual property, data protection, pr0n, free speech etc. to think about

On a slightly lighter note, it's quite amusing to hear that the e-commerce bill will be signed with pen and ink by Mary Mc Aleese, and then, later electronically, allegedly the same thing happened when Bill and Bertie signed a bill digitally a few years ago

Draco

Originally posted by spod:
On a slightly lighter note, it's quite amusing to hear that the e-commerce bill will be signed with pen and ink by Mary Mc Aleese, and then, later electronically, allegedly the same thing happened when Bill and Bertie signed a bill digitally a few years ago

She has to. If it was not signed first with pen and ink, it wouldn't be law and digitially signing it would mean it was an expensive piece of toliet paper.

Draco

spod

Originally posted by Draco:
She has to. If it was not signed first with pen and ink, it wouldn't be law and digitially signing it would mean it was an expensive piece of toliet paper.

Precisely, however the impression given by official press releases and a multitude of press articles was that it would be signed digitally by the president, and no mention whatsoever was made of pen and paper.

I just found it amusing that it took an enquiry to the attorney generals office by a law professor in trinity to clarify that the bill was definitely going to be signed on pen and paper first because it wasn't mentioned in any of the reporting on the bill.