Governing Our Digital Waters: Can the International Law on the High Seas and Piracy Enshrined in Part VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Be Replicated for Security Governance of the Internet? (original) (raw)

Governing Our Digital Waters: Can the International Law on the High Seas and Piracy Enshrined in Part VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Be Replicated for Security Governance of the Internet?

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has been, since 1994, the only globally recognised codification of rights and responsibilities of nations in the international waters, also known as the high seas. For the purpose of this essay we shall only consider Part VII (High Seas) of UNCLOS, as the international cyberspace is in many ways comparable to the international waters, and their security regulations, as we will see throughout the essay, pose many similar challenges. Within Part VII of UNCLOS the following two relevant themes arise (clustered by author): inclusive and safe usage and navigation of the high seas (Art. 87-94, 97) and suppression of piracy and other criminal acts in the high seas (Art. 100-109, 111) purposes of relevant concepts (free navigation, illegal acts, aggression, etc.) as well as to consider the rights and responsibilities of the nation states between those applicable in international waters and in cyberspace.