Yahoo!: 'We need new cybercrime laws'

Yahoo! has called for "effective" legislation combined with industry self-regulation to deal with online fraud, child abuse and other cybercrime.

The internet services giant said policy makers must concentrate on defining illegal use of technology, rather than how an action breaks the law.

Robin Pembrooke, director of product operations for Yahoo Europe, said: "Effective policy defines what is legal and what is illegal. If legislation is concerned with how an action is illegal it creates rigidity, and means the legislation won't keep up with the technology."

"The lack of global legislation adds to the complexity of the situation. It's not realistic to have global legislation but we do need international consistency," Pembrooke added. "One example is 'child abuse' content, which has a different definition in the US than in the UK."

Pembrooke advocated a combination of legislation and self-regulation of internet businesses in order to combat cybercrime.

"There are some really good examples of where the industry has come together. The Internet Watch Foundation is funded by industry, and without legislation this approach has achieved fantastic things in the last five years," said Pembrooke.

An representative from Interpol, a police organisation that facilitates data sharing between forces to catch criminals, agreed that over-legislation would not solve international cybercrime problems but called for a global legislative framework to make international evidence transfer easier and international response times quicker.

"[Pembrooke] is completely right, we shouldn't over-legislate" said Bernhard Otupal, crime intelligence officer at the financial and high tech crime sub-directorate of Interpol. "In the EU there are so many different regulations covering different technologies. What we need is real international legislation and a global legislative framework."

"There must be a self-regulatory process for the big players, with internal rules, as that is efficient. However, self regulation is not enough - you need both legislation and self-regulation," he added.

Yahoo! said that over-legislation is incompatible with the needs of its customers, whose needs must be balanced with the needs of governments.

"We find users want freedom of expression, privacy and ease of use. We have to balance that with the needs of governments looking for increasing access to data," said Pembrooke.

Last year Yahoo! was accused of passing data to the Chinese government which led to the arrest and imprisonment of two Chinese internet users, including a journalist who was sentenced to ten years in prison.

"We feel horrible about the political arrests of internet users in China but we believe it's better to be there and cooperate with the authorities than not be there," said Pembrooke.

"By cooperating with the authorities we can improve people's lives. By giving them access to the internet, this raises awareness in differences in government approaches, and increase forces for change," Pembrooke said.

"Our challenge is we have to work inside the laws of the countries we operate in," Pembrooke added.

Tom Espiner writes for ZDNet UK