“Information technology crimes”
“Crimes in the sphere of computer information”
“High-technology crimes”
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Many other jurisdictions construe cybercrime as a crime committed with the use of ICT.56
Regardless of how cybercrime is addressed, or what method is used to adapt it, a legal definition
of “cybercrime” is rarely provided. Even when domestic legislation explicitly refers to “cybercrime”,
there are often differences in how various national laws of the same state define the term. For
example, while one approach defines cybercrime as “crimes referred to in this law”,57 another
approach is to do so on the basis of instrumentalities, broadly defining cybercrime as “criminal
offences carried out in a network or committed by the use of computer systems and computer
data”.58
B. International & Regional Instruments
There is no multilateral cybercrime instrument that explicitly defines the meaning of term. That said,
the term has been used to accommodate a broad range of different offences, making any typology
or classification difficult59: “[t]he word ‘cybercrime’ itself is not amenable to a single definition, and
is likely best considered as a collection of acts or conduct, rather than one single act”.60
There are, however, two general approaches within applicable multilateral instruments on
cybercrime on how to conceptualize cybercrime:
1 The first approach understands cybercrime as a collection of acts, without actually providing
a singular definition of the term “cybercrime” itself;
2 The second approach is to offer a broad definition of either the term “offences against
computer information”61 or to use the term “information crime”62 without explicit reference
to the term “cybercrime”.
Examples of the first approach can be found, in the Budapest Convention, the AU Convention and
the ECOWAS Directive. Examples of the second approach are found in the CIS Agreement63 and
the SCO Agreement.64
C. Academia
Although academia has made wide and varying contributions to the effort to create a definition of
“cybercrime”,65 no single, standardized consensus definition has been agreed upon. One colorful
descriptor is that of cybercrime as “new wine, no bottles”.66 In any case, similar to what has been
just discussed, there is consensus that cybercrimes can be appropriately understood as including
both traditional crimes moved to a new environment, also new crimes made possible by this new
Page 72 | Chapter 2 | § A. Working Definition of Cybercrime
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