Another, albeit somewhat far-fetched possibility, is that cyberspace will emerge as a jurisdiction unto itself, with special rules and special tribunals to decide interstate and international disputes. However, innovations in dispute resolution in cyberspace are more likely to arise in the realm of civil disputes. The Virtual Magistrate Project , financed by the National Center for Automated Information Research, with the cooperation and assistance of the American Arbitration Association, the Cyberspace Law Institute, and the Villanova Center for Information Law and Policy, is an online voluntary arbitration system which began operating in March, 1996. The project hopes to provide a quick and easy means of resolving disputes about matters such as offensive files or messages posted on computer networks.
Arbitrations are to be conducted by a single arbitrator through e-mail.
As of this writing, only one dispute has been decided by the Virtual Magistrate Project, and two cases are currently pending in its on-line docket. A more immediate concern regards international jurisdictional issues, which are even less settled than U.S. issues. A particularly chilling example of this problem is the recent prosecution of the former CEO of CompuServe's German subsidiary for making child pornography available to German citizens on the Internet. This case did not present a jurisdictional issue for the German court to address, but it does illustrate the types of liability to which trans-national Internet businesses may expose themselves. The basis of the conviction was that CompuServe had made available Internet newsgroups which contained child pornography.