With the rapid growth of the internet, the law is often expected to be ‘up-to-date’ in order to monitor the activities which occur online. As the internet has no geographical boundaries, the global community mostly rely on international law to maintain appropriate ethical and social behaviour. However, there is another side to this argument where people argue that international legislation is unable to monitor the entire internet and that individual community leaders should govern their own through the use of End-Use License Agreements (EULA). Due to this, many ethical and social ramifications such as privacy and cyberbullying breaches have arose – which can have far-reaching emotional and legal consequences on internet users.
Surrounding the increasing global use of the internet to share and obtain data, the problem of piracy becomes an issue that urgently requires attention. Piracy is a cybercrime widely committed around the world. Due to illegal downloading spanning over both criminal and civil law (Crimes Act 1900), this substantially blurs the line between the consequences that may be imposed, rendering legislation to be ineffective.
Similarly, concerns related to cyberbullying have also attracted mixed support from the global community regarding the need for a reform in legislation (Barker 2016). Some believe that reforming international legislation is the best method to ensure that cyberbullying is reduced. Others believe that individual communities should have their own governing systems that parallel the governing system of the physical world, through EULAs (Van Kokswijk 2010) in order to minimise the occurrences of cyberbullying.
This report takes the stance that both privacy and cyberbullying require attention in order to minimise unethical and anti-social behaviour. However, the question is, whether to rely on individual community EULAs or international legislation in order to meet this aim. This report talks about the advantages of the effectiveness of EULAs and international legislation in maintaining online activities, and proposes a universal dual regulatory system of online governance.
Effectiveness of EULAs in maintaining online activities
End-User License Agreements (EULA) is a regulatory mechanism commonly used in many online communities. The internet used to be a space deprived of governmental control, which made it unfair to people to seek redress when they are wronged, as laws that applied offline, did not naturally apply online (Barker 2016; Van Kokswijk 2010). Since then, the global community has developed a strong need for governance online due to the increasing growth of the internet and how it is integrated into our everyday lives. Changes in ‘norms’ for socialising has led to people spending at least 50% of their time online (Barker 2016). This is where community EULAs ‘step in’ and take the initiative to set ground rules for their users. EULAs tend to reflect and parallel the governing system of in the physical world. Due to EULAs being individually written by communities, their ability to remain ‘up-to-date’ on their community’s standards and expectations is generally better than international legislation in resolving issues online (as seen in data 1 below).
Data 1: Average of How Issues Were Resolved by Online Communities in 2014 (Barker 2016)

On the other hand, with the increased reliance on EULAs, questions regarding the practicality and fairness of fully utilising EULAs to achieve redress and remedy for an individual have risen as a result of the geographical nature of the internet. As EULAs are enforced by individual communities, an individual’s ability to seek appropriate redress for wrongs against them is significantly impaired (Fraser 2010; Baker 2016; Van Kokswijk 2010). Individual communities do not have the same amount of time and resources like the government does to always follow up breaches of their user agreements to appropriately remedy the victim – often only removing access from wrongdoers from their services (Barker 2016; Van Kokswijk 2010). This means that the remedy a victim receives is inappropriate to how they have been wronged and is overall ineffective.
Evidently, EULAs are somewhat effective in achieving justice for an individual. The regulatory system favours speed rather than the results generated for the victim in order to bring ‘fast judgement’ to rule breakers within their community. This can be helpful in mitigating the rate of occurrence of cyberbullying with a quick and effective regulatory process. However, with piracy, EULAs are having an opposite effect. Studies suggest that EULAs of major companies, especially those in the film industry, have strict regulation policies which deters people from utilising their services (Knott 2014). This means that more people turn to other methods of obtaining movies such as illegal downloading or purchasing physical copies as seen in the data 2 below.
Data 2: Method of Obtaining Movies from Top 20 Countries in Illegal Movie Downloads in 2011 (Munro 2015)

Studies of internet bandwidth usage around the world has revealed that illegal downloading occupies the largest sector within the usage of the internet (Munro 2015). Contributors to illegal downloading include Peer-to-Peer (P2P) software such as uTorrent and BitComet, as well as sites that provide .torrent files as a provision to distribute illegal files such as The Pirate Bay. In 2012, Australians were ranked 6th in the world for the highest rate of piracy with over 19 million illegal music downloads (Zuel 2012).
Effectiveness of international legislation in maintaining online activities
Different from End-User License Agreements, international legislation is enforced by the government rather than individual community leaders. They derive from international treaties which have been ratified into domestic statute in order to be enforceable (Fraser 2010). After the ratification process, this makes achieving appropriate redress for victims infinitely more possible and easier compared to EULAs. Due to legislation being enforced by the government, more ‘real-life’ penalties can be imposed, from monetary compensation for damages to incapacitation, depending on the severity of the crime committed (Crimes Act 1900). This means that it is a more effective mean to achieving the rights of the victim.
As international legislation relies on the cooperation of individual sovereign states in order to function (Fraser 2010), it is not a reliable source to achieve justice for a victim. In order for international law to be enforceable, the treaty will need to be ratified in both countries in which the parties-involved reside. Due to this, perpetrators residing in countries that are not willing to cooperate, will be free from consequence (Van Wynsberghe & Van der Ham 2015; Engle n.d). Also, due to needing to cooperate with other countries in order to maintain online activity, makes it really slow to ‘keep up’ with the online community’s standards and expectations and ultimately, an unviable ‘main’ source of regulation online.
Similar to EULAs, international legislation has had mixed effectiveness in achieving justice for an individual. Opposite to EULAs, it favours high enforceability rather than speed (Van Kokswijk 2010), therefore making it extremely slow to stay ‘current’ with community norms and expectations. The high enforceability of hard law lays out a good foundation for the future in order to combat both cyberbullying and piracy. However, its effectiveness in achieving justice is limited to the signatories of a treaty, as well as how ‘in-line’ it is with current standards. Over the years, the law has been left to play ‘catch up’ with technological advancement while new crimes and methods of cyberbullying have arose. Similar to bullying in the physical world, cyberbullying can happen through different methods. This includes distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), doxing, hate messages and threats (Ozgur 2015). As the internet is easily accessible, the population of people on the internet have exponentially increased since the early 2000s (as seen below in data 3).
Data 3: Percentage of Households Who Have Access to the Internet (ABS 2010)

Within the population increase are teenagers and young children who are considered to be mentally ‘vulnerable’ in the eye of the law (Bazelon 2013). Despite cyberbullying lacking a physical form, many have expressed that it is worse than traditional forms of bullying as it ‘ignores the four walls of a home’ which can cause psychological damage to an individual (Van Kokswijk 2010). This highlights the desperate need for reform in order to minimise cyberbullying. Therefore, relying solely on international legislation to mitigate the social and ethical implications of cyberbullying and piracy is not feasible.
Effectiveness of a dual regulatory system in maintaining online activities
As both End-User License Agreements and international legislation have their advantages and disadvantages, most disadvantages can be solved with the advantages of the other. EULAs favours speed over appropriateness of consequence, while international legislation favours enforceability over speed. This therefore means that a dual system can be beneficial in the maintenance of online activities. Van Kokswijk (2010) suggests that a mixture of both regulatory systems which closely mirrors the regulatory system of the physical world is more effective than utilising both on their own (as seen in table 1).
Table 1: Overlaps in Physical and Virtual Governing Systems (Van Kokswijk 2010)
Regulation	Physical Community	Virtual Community
¬Controller	Rules	Sanctions	Combined System	Rules	Sanctions	Combined System
Primary
Transgressor	Personal Ethics & Values	Self-Restraint	Self-Control	Personal Ethics & Netiquette	Self-restraint	Self-control + Software Code (= Restriction by Software Robot)
Secondary
Contract Party	Contracts	Personal Approach with Reference to Agreements	Supervisor on the basis of contracts	User Agreement Reminder by ‘Pop Ups’ in Software Code	Correction and Limitation by Administrators/Moderators and/or Software Code	Software Code (Limitation of Possibilities, Exclusion, etc.)
Externally
Social Environment	Norms	Aid by Clergyman, Social Worker, etc.	Informal Control	Situational & Peer Group Norms	Shaming & Blaming, Exclusion	Ignoring the Online Personality (with Software Code), Pressure by Peer Leader
Organisation	Organisational Rules	Organisational Enforcement	Organisational Control	Organisational Rules	Organisational Enforcement	Public Organisational Pressure
Government	Law	State Enforcement	Legal System	Some Law & Case Law	State Enforcement	Legal System
International Organisation	Treaty	Cooperative Enforcement	Legal System	Treaty	State Enforcement	Legal System

This dual regulation system is currently used by many online communities. In Edwards (2012), a player on the online game, ‘RuneScape’, was arrested for making real life threats to a player in order to gain currency in-game. This is a clear demonstration on the effectiveness of both the EULA and international law working in order to achieve justice for the victim, efficiently. The dual regulatory system allows for both EULAs and international law to play a role in the regulation of online activities. As EULAs are always a step ahead of international law, they are faster to update and adapt to the online community’s current expectations and standards and be highly enforceable due to international legislation.
Meanwhile, due to the presence of international law, the mix of regulations, conflicts between jurisdiction and competency to enforce arise, the law may be able to act on issues that happen, however, whether it is competent to do so is dependent on available governmental resources and international cooperation (Barker 2016). This ultimately renders EULAs irrelevant as international law overrules EULAs (Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 s. 51). This is out-of-line with the needs and requirements of the online world as there are differences in requirements that online spaces have in needing governance as some laws that apply in real life may not be fitting online. For example, in reality, looting and killing other people is considered two different criminal crimes, however if they were committed in an online game, it would be perfectly acceptable and unfitting for the government to ‘step-in’ under the international obligation ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (Barker 2016; Annan, Evans & Sahnoun 2002). Due to this conflict, currently the government has ‘put off’ law reform and nothing significant has been done to address ethical and social implications of governance regarding the internet.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is no ‘one’ method to address the issues and concerns surrounding cyberbullying and piracy. Each regulatory system has their own benefits and shortfalls. The End-User License Agreement system of governance provides online communities with the speed and effectiveness of dealing with ‘deviants’ within their community, while being limited to basic consequence. Making it a viable short-term method to mitigate the occurrence of cyberbullying. However, EULAs have the opposite effect of piracy causing instances of piracy to increase.
The reliance on international legislation system of governance allows victims of online abuse to seek appropriate redress and remedy for cyberbullying, however, the law is slow in catching up with community standards and expectations, meaning that some online abuses are not seen as a ‘wrongdoing’ under eye of the law. On the other hand, international legislation has a good foundation to enforce anti-piracy laws, however, there is not enough intergovernmental resources to enforce them rendering them ineffective.
The dual regulatory system takes advantage of both the benefits of either systems and amalgamates them into a method which is more effective and addresses the previous shortfalls in order to better mitigate unethical and antisocial behaviour online.
Although a dual regulatory system is better than relying only either EULAs or international legislation, more needs to be done to ensure that enforceability and speed to address social and ethical concerns is improved.