Information and Communication Technology Law

The programme examines the relationship between law and ICT within four areas: Electronic communications, intellectual property, privacy, data protection and electronic commerce.

To what extent should anonymous use of electronic communications be legally permitted and protected? What legal rights does one have when participating in online social networking communities, such as Facebook? To what extent may one lawfully circumvent a copy-protection mechanism on a compact disc (CD) in order to play the CD contents through another medium? What are and should be the legal rules on liability for use of data and applications in cloud computing? To what degree may Internet search engines like Google lawfully register data on their users? How is the basic infrastructure of the Internet regulated, and how ought it to be regulated?

These are some of the burning questions of the “Information Age” in which we live, and it is with these, along with a large number of other similar questions, that the LL.M. in Information and Communication Technology Law deals.

The principal aim of this Master of Laws programme is to impart understanding of the central legal issues that arise as a result of developments in the use of ICT. In very general terms, such issues concern the ways in which ICT affects the application of existing law, and existing law affects the use of ICT, and the manner in which ICT functions as a regulatory mechanism in itself.

The programme is offered at the Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law (NRCCL). The NRCCL is one of the oldest and most prestigious research institutions in this field. The center has a strong international orientation with well-established links to many foreign research organizations. Its staff and associates originate from countries all over the world.