Georgetown Law
Georgetown Law Library

International and Foreign Cyberspace Law Research Guide

This guide covers resources on various aspects of cyberspace law, including Internet governance, electronic commerce, privacy, cyber crime, cyber warfare, and cyber terrorism.

National Laws to Combat Cyber Crime

The resources described below will help you identify and/or retrieve national laws pertaining to cyber crime and related topics.

Sharing Electronic Resources and Laws on Crime (SHERLOC)
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) maintains this free web portal. Content includes an Electronic Evidence Hub, which offers practical guidance on electronic evidence gathering to combat cyber crime and other types of transnational crime, as well as model mutual legal assistance resources. In addition, SHERLOC offers the following searchable databases of primary legal materials. Coverage is selective, not comprehensive, and varies by jurisdiction.

  • National Legislation to combat various forms of transnational crime. Full texts in the language(s) of the jurisdiction or in English translation (sometimes both).
  • Case Law involving transnational crime. Brief English language summaries of selected court decisions. 
     

International Encyclopaedia of Laws: Privacy and Technology Law
This resource offers detailed, book-length summaries of privacy and data protection law in Europe, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the U.K., as well as national laws pertaining to information technology in 38 jurisdictions worldwide. The treatises on IT law follow a standard outline, making it easy to compare laws across jurisdictions, including sections on computer-related crime (Part VII). Citations to primary laws are included. All are available to download as PDFs.
 

Foreign Law Guide
Use this subscription database to identify primary law sources for jurisdictions outside the U.S. On the homepage, scroll down and click on the Laws by Subject tab, Select Cybercrime, Data Protection, Information & Internet from alphabetical list of subjects, select the desired jurisdiction, and then scroll down for laws to combat cyber crime. In some cases, you will find a direct link to an electronic version of a law; in others, only a citation to a print source is provided. Ask a librarian for assistance in locating print sources.
 

Global-Regulation 
This user-friendly subscription database allows you to search by keyword in English for national laws and regulations from 110 jurisdictions worldwide. After running a search, use the country filters on the left to narrow by jurisdiction or click on the Advanced Mode link, displayed above the search results, to enter additional search terms linked by Boolean operators. For non-English-speaking jurisdictions, machine-generated English translations are provided, along with a link to the law or regulation in its original language.