Правовые аспекты международного сотрудничества в сфере информационных и телекоммуникационных технологий

Abstract

The global means are at present in the process of permanent development and transformation. These changes have given people the opportunity to communicate on the worldwide scale and to share information, thus becoming a global community. Telecommunications have become an inalienable part of modern life; they play a significant role in political, economic and social life of society. Information services and systems are provided on the international scale, that is why a question concerning the establishment of a global system of communication is raised. Such a new and continuously changing phenomenon as telecommunications technologies has generated legal issues which take the special attention of lawyers. At present the basic problem in this sphere is the definition of the notion of "telecommunications". Some authors believe that communications are only the technical means of connection provision and the regime of their functioning. However, nowadays a different point of view has prevailed which considers telecommunications to be not only the technical means for creating and transmitting of information but also the process as such, by means of which sharing of information among the individuals with the help of a general system of symbols, signs or gestures is performed. Thus, telecommunications can be viewed as a complex many-sided phenomenon having legal aspects. Telecommunications while assisting in solving some problems of a person make him face other problems, no less complex. In particular, the worldwide means of information transmitting and broadcasting touch on fundamental human rights because they can influence psychic and intellectual processes in his mind. Information dissemination by means of telecommunications involves the problem of provision of information confidentiality. The means of communication raise a number of problems concerning the provision of copyright and related rights, along with other spheres of law where rather serious legal issues concerning the use of telecommunications means emerge. Traditionally, legal regulations and national telecommunications control were referred to the internal order of states. However, solution of the given problems is becoming impossible without international collaboration and interaction. The norms of national laws only are not enough to provide this solution due to the fact that the spread of technologies and means of long distance communications has overstepped national borders. That is why coordination of the activities and adoption of joint decisions take place simultaneously on three levels: on the international level under such organizations as the International Telecommunications Union, the International Organization of Satellite Communications, the International Organization of maritime satellite communications, the World Trade Organization; on the European level — by means of establishment of programme documents and guidelines of the European Commission; on the national scale — by applying the implementation mechanism and internal law norms unification. Information and telecommunications technologies touch on many legal issues impossible to solve without a single legal mechanism, which could serve the rights of proprietors and users of information and telecommunications systems and make information and telecommunications services valuable in the information market.