5. Legal cluster Legal Internet public policy issues are cross-cutting, affecting most of the other policy clusters. Most legal issues are already regulated for the offline environment (jurisdiction, copyright, trademark, labour law). The main challenge in this cluster is the application of existing legal mechanisms to Internet transactions, particularly in view of transborder aspects and the speed of Internet activities. 5.1 Jurisdiction Jurisdiction is the authority of the court and state organs to decide on legal cases. Each state has the sovereign right to exercise jurisdiction over its territory. With the high level of transborder exchange, the Internet poses challenges to the traditional concept of jurisdiction. For example, e-commerce transactions often involve numerous jurisdictions. In cybercrime, similarly, it is often difficult to establish jurisdiction as the attribution of online activities could be both difficult to establish and to link to a specific jurisdiction. The effectiveness of international Internet regulations will depend substantially on addressing the question of jurisdiction. Status of governance mechanisms for jurisdiction International aspects of jurisdiction are regulated by private international law (referred to as conflict of laws, in the Anglo-Saxon legal system). There is a wide range of rules and practices addressing the question of jurisdiction for specific public policy issues, such as contract law, data protection, defamation, intellectual property, and taxation. The jurisdiction regulation impacts the following Internet public policy issues: cybercrime, freedom of expression, privacy, copyright, arbitration, intermediaries, e-commerce, consumer protection, taxation, and content policy, among others. Possible gaps in dealing with jurisdiction An implementation gap exists in the lack of mechanisms that will ensure efficient and costeffective dealing with jurisdictional aspects of Internet public policy issues since addressing jurisdictional aspects in traditional juridical procedures typically takes a long time and considerable human/financial resources. This implementation gap could particularly affect individuals and institutions that do not have the financial and human resources needed for long and expensive litigation processes. The fact that the Internet is cross-border in nature and jurisdictions mostly national produces tensions which indicate a policy gap. However, this does not necessarily imply a need for full harmonization of legislation. 29