Internet is a behemoth, cutting across physical country boundaries and accessible to anyone and everyone from any corner of the world. Precisely due to this pervading nature, Internet is not under full control of any government or body, though there may be specific rules and regulations pertaining to individual websites. A behemoth at large and without controls is a real threat. No existing laws of any country can be universally applied to the Internet. This has given birth to enactment of new and distinct cyber laws in many countries.

Internet is a separate sphere, distinct from physical real world. Liberal interpretation of existing laws of any country to apply to the cyberspace activities will be wrong as there will be vast difference between the physical and cyber worlds. Any transaction that takes place through cyberspace should have legal sanctity for enforcement and without cyber laws this cannot be done. In the absence of effective cyber laws, people will distrust Internet to the extent that e-commerce may become totally unviable which will be a disaster for the whole world.

Jurisdiction for application of the cyber law is a big issue. For example, a single transaction through the Internet may involve laws of at least three jurisdictions, i.e. the laws of the county of the transaction initiator, the country hosting the server facilitating that transaction and the country of the other end-user. These three different entities could be located in three different countries, e.g. a merchandise order placed from US through a server based in Brazil and executed from China; obviously, cyber laws of one country will have no jurisdiction on players in the other two countries. Yet another scenario of lack of jurisdiction is that contents of a website could be legal in one country but illegal in another country, e.g. pornography.

Obviously there is need for cyber laws that can be applied to all players uniformly but this is easier said than done. The next best approach then is for individual nations to enact their own cyber laws to regulate all actions on the Internet affecting their own population. Additionally, nations could enter into multi-lateral international agreements to formulate uniform rules applicable to cyberspace activities. There will also have to have an international organization that can formulate new rules and enforce those rules across countries.