Global Data Transfers on the Internet: Lessons from the Ancient World

Abstract

The Internet's global reach greatly complicates the task of determining which courts and regulators should have jurisdiction over acts of data processing, and under which legal standards such processing should be judged. Challenges to data protection law concerning jurisdiction and applicable law caused by the Internet may seem completely novel. In fact, legal systems have had to grapple with difficult issues of jurisdiction and applicable law for thousands of years, and interesting parallels to some of the issues that the Internet presents can be found in the law of the ancient world. These lessons in turn lead to reflection about whether there are not more similarities between various systems of data protection law (such as those in the EU and in APEC) than is often assumed.

Keywords: data protection, privacy, Roman law, European Union, APEC, territoriality, jurisdiction, private international law