eciding, where does the offence occur?" The best guide to the way the law should work is to study the past and the present, not to attempt to predict every possible future. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said long ago, "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." When a new media technology emerges, the best thing to do is to wait and see what problems actually emerge, not panic about what could happen. Once we understand the actual risks, we can legislate accordingly and with full regard to the competing interests at stake. But there is another problem that practically circulates through the Internet: The viruses. They can move stealthily and strike without warning. Yet they have no real life of their own, and goo virtually unnoticed until they find a suitable host. Computer viruses- tiny bits of programming code capable of destroying vast amounts of stored data- bear an uncannily close relationship to their biological namesake. And like natural viruses are constantly changing, making them more and more difficult to detect. It is estimated that two or three new varieties are written each day. Most experts believe that a virus is created by an immature, disenchanted computer whiz, frequently called a "cracker". The effects may be benign: on variation of the famous "Stoned" virus merely displays a message calling for the legalization of marijuana. Other viruses, however, can scramble files to create a frenzy of duplication that may cause a computer's microchips to fail. The rapid increase in computer networks, with their millions of user exchanging vast amounts of information, has only made things worse. With word-processing macros embedded in text, opening e-mail can now unleash a virus in a network or a hard disk. Web browsers can also download running code, some of it possibly malign. Distributing objects over global networks without a good way to authenticate them leads to similar risks. Crackers have also succ...
