| In this thesis, I investigate the concept of Internet regulation and its implementation by examining the Convention on Cybercrime, which regulates the European Union (EU) and non EU countries. I examine the approaches taken toward the Convention on Cybercrime in two different socio-economic and political systems: Canada, a modern democracy that only signed the Convention, and Romania, an ex-communist democracy that both signed and ratified it. With this Convention, the Council of Europe has claimed that one model of global Internet regulation is appropriate for all countries. I argue that the infrastructure and legal, economic, and socio-cultural aspects of local cultures make the global homogenous regulation of the Internet impractical, therefore regulation on a national level would be more effective. I also try to contribute to current research by studying the complexity of the global regulation of Internet crimes by demonstrating: the importance of democracy and technology for public policy frameworks for cybercrime, by describing; the limitations of the model represented by the global monolithic Convention on Cybercrime, and by suggesting that a universal democratic model of global Internet regulation is utopian and does not address the individual needs of each country. |
