Illegal Content

Dr. Mona Al-achkar Jabbour

Professor of Law
President of the
Lebanese Information Technologies Association
LITA
“Creating a National Consensus for Online Safety”
“Illegal Content in the East”
Bahrain- 26-28 of April

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 Goal Of The Presentation

• This presentation is meant to bring up to your attention

• Why we are concerned?

• What can be considered “illegal content for us” ?

• Lessons we have learned from Western experience in

“fighting illegal content on the internet”

• how we have incorporated them into our work and how we

can see the internet safety work in the Middle East

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 Risks on the super highway
• Privacy
• Personal
• Communication
• Cyber bullying
• Websites
• Fraud and false information
• Illegal content

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 We are concerned
• Cybersecurity
• Pottential threats
• Economic loss
• Social security and stability
• Political and military
– “Illegal content” may represent a serious threat to
international peace and security, specifically when it is
about warfare terrorism, recruiting for terrorism,
money laundering, and illegal traffics.

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 Content legal issues

Security / “Cybercrime”
Authentification Liability
(i.e. illegal Content)

„electronic Consumer Protection of minors

money“ protection (harmful content)

Commercial
Taxation Jurisdiction
Communications
Privacy/
Copyright applicable law
Data Protection

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 WSIS
• Geneva Declaration Of Principles
– Strengthening the trust framework, including
information security and network security,
authentication, privacy and consumer protection,
is a prerequisite for the development of the
Information Society and for building confidence
among users of ICTs

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 Illegal content & Societies
• “Regulating the content” is a traditional concept

• With Digital content distribution, the national

government’s task is getting more complicated
and more difficult.

• rapid pace of Technical innovations in the

Information and communications field.
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 what is illegal off-line is illegal on-line
• definition of “Illegal content” is done according
to national legislation, and by the national
courts
• “illegality in one country may not be illegality in
another one”,
• national Definition of crimes and illegal activities
raises serious challenges for the national
legislations’ enforcement
• definition shall be given according to National
and international law
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 Legislation
• the US Communication Decency Act (CDA) passed as
part of the Telecommunications Act in 1996.
• It imposes criminal penalties on anyone who used Internet to
communicate material that, under contemporary community
standards, would be deemed patently offensive to minors under
18 of age.
• The law was ruled unconstitutional by the District Court for
the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in June 1996 then by the
Supreme Court in June 1997.
• Following CDA, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was
enacted in Congress in October 1998, it sought to impose
criminal penalties against any commercial website that made
material that is deemed "harmful to minors" available on the
World Wide Web to anyone under certain age (18).
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 Legislation
• Act (CHIPA) or CIPA targeted at all schools and
public libraries that accept federal money.
• The law mandates blocking or filtering of
material deemed “obscene” or “harmful to
minors.”
• Lawsuits in federal court called the law
unconstitutional.

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 Legislation Europe
• Common agreement
• racist and discrimination material, hate speech, child
pornography ,abusive marketing, abusers grooming,
bullying, obscenity, child abuse images,cyber crime,
extremism, radicalization, violence, drugs, self-
destruction, suicide, provocation to terrorism, crimes
against the person, narcotics and drug trafficking,
production and distribution of child porn materials,
sexual abuse, fraudulent and misleading
material,xenophobia, narcotic traffics, copyright
infringement and all kind of websites illegal traffic and
activities., such as money laundering and terrorism.
• But still some european countries didn’t sign the
European convention
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 Looking in the ME-AW
• legislation dealing with “illegal content” on the internet has a
variety of objectives, backgrounds.
• Some are mainly concerned by protecting the regime and the
government, others to protect social and religious matters.

• we can add: injurious information to religion and officials,

gambling, entertainment, political opposition speeches, and
human rights- related activities.
• Different Levels of tolerability

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In Lebanon- Wrong deeds & crimes
on the internet – What legal
framework?
• Groups of peace
• Sexting
• Defamation
• Law enforcement
• Courts position

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No National consensus: no natioanl
legislation
• - What some people might find distasteful
and offensive, others may not. This may
affect what can be considered as “illegal
content” or as “harmful”.
• - programs on some TV channels
• - “racism” in the Lebanese society

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 Lebanon
Where do we begin with Illegal?
• An estimated half of all internet users in Lebanon
connect to the web via illegal service providers
• the legal ones operate outside needed regulations to
foster and support online safety.
• Lebanon has not passed strong laws to govern
internet use
• Lebanon notably lacks legislation to protect the
security and privacy of individual users.
• The “complete package” of so-called cyber-laws for
Lebanon were written with assistance from the EU but
not only “these laws have not been enacted” but also
were replaced by another “draft law”.
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 Who makes the rules?
• Religious authorities
• National legislation (Penal, Medias, …) as well
as in many countries does not specifically
address illegal content on the Internet.
• WWW treated as any other publishing media
• decency, defamation, etc …
• “religious authorities have issued statements
banning some websites that the governments
were not able to block”
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 * Lebanon
• In Lebanon: no specific legislation to define and to fight “illegal content”
online.
• In the draft law there is a tendency to make ISPs liable for the illegal
content
• Besides lacking precision, Lebanese legislative texts are very cultural
and social tinted, which makes them very expandable.
• Actually the Penal Code talks about crimes against “Ethics and morals”.
• According to legislation in force, “illegal content” is any material that:
• “contains libelous, defamatory or unlawful content, and that
violate or infringe the rights of any third part, including copyright,
trademark, privacy, publicity, and personal or proprietary rights”.

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 Content legal issues- Lebanon
• offensive, slanderous or abusive language
• unlawful publications
• infringement of privacy or moral rights
• infringement of intellectual property rights
• transmission of trade secrets, know how or otherwise
secret information
• sexual or child abusive information
• Child pornography
• Grooming
• Hate material
• Xenophobia
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 Press Law
Press crimes
• Prohibited to be published: (art. 12 chapter 3)
• Wrong and false news
• Data qualified as “secret”
• slandering
• Reports, books, letters, articles, photos, and news
that are contrary to public morality.
• impairment of the dignity of the chairpersons
• In incitement to commit crimes and to provoke
fanaticism and endangering the safety of the State
(religious, racist, …)
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 • Learned Lessons

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 Legislations and the Nature of the
internet
• specific regulations with limited success
• global nature of the internet necessitates a global
agreement regarding “illegal content” regulation on the
internet.
• impact on some human rights, like freedom of
expression and the right to access information.
• special laws to protect citizens or certain categories of
them (minors and children)

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 four things regulate the Internet:

• Lawrence Lessig, “Code and other laws of

cyberspace”
• 1- laws (by government sanction and force)
• 2- social norms (by expectation,
encouragement, or embarrassment)
• 3- markets (by price and availability)
• 4- architecture (what the technology permits,
favours, dissuades, or prohibits)
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 Cybersecurity myths
• Melissa Hathaway discusses some common
cyber security myths held by the general public.
The myths include:
- Consumer protection exists in cyberspace;
- Firewalls and virus scanners protect my computer
and my enterprise;
- My government has the solution and will protect
me;
- Physical assets are more valuable than
information;
- Laws are keeping pace with technological
innovation.

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 Solutions
• pre-requisite for protection = technology
• Standards and normes
• Regulations and laws to deter, to punish
and to prosecute
• Good governance

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 Non-legislative measures

• Hotlines
• Awareness
• Filtering
• content rating
• Self- regulation
– particular codes of conduct or ethics, and usually adopted by
parties active in the same field.
– Relying on the experiences of self-regulation in the Medias (in
Lebanon) doesn’t reveal a successful story.
– Still, it should be recognized that it has been successful in many
other countries and regions in the world especially when it
serves as a base for prosecution in case of violation

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 Blocking
• Is not the solution
• Piracy in peer-to -peer
• efficiency of blocking measures
• Blocking should be used when nothing
else works
• The alternative: removing the illegal
content.

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 Importance of a strategy
• the adoption of anti cyber crime and cyber
security strategy is extremely important
both at national and international level.
• This necessitates a national consensus
about what may be considered “illegal”.

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 Cooperation
• Neither the private sector nor the public one can
address cyber security issues by themselves:
• legislation alone is hardly enough,
• Technical solutions could be inefficient without
enforcement.
• Private public partnership: the private sector has
experience, while the public sector has the possibility
to enforce.
• Each country is concerned

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 Incorporation
• Projects to modernize higher education
• Creating the Cybersecurity observatory
• Capacity building
• Awareness Campaign

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 Any question?

Million of thanks

[email protected]

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