Chronology of Events - 2000s

The following is a chronological listing of significant events in the development of the field of Information Technology law during the 2000s:

2000
January 1, 2000 &mdash; Many experts, governments and businesses feared that the change of century/millennium would cause serious problems with computer systems, since many legacy software programs shortened the year stored to only the last two digits, such as storing 99 for 1999. When the year 2000 came, the year 2000 would be shortened to 00, causing the computer to think it was 1900. Called the Year 2000 (Y2K) bug, extensive investments in software remediation resulted in only a few glitches, and no catastrophic system shutdowns.

November 2000 &mdash; After months of legal proceedings, the French court rules Yahoo! must block French users from accessing hate memorabilia in its auction site.

November 16, 2000 &mdash; ICANN selects new TLDs: .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, .pro.

2001
January 2001 &mdash; Given its inability to block French users from accessing hate memorabilia in its auction site, Yahoo! removes those auctions entirely.

February 12, 2001 &mdash; The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decides Napster case, ruling that distributors of file-sharing software can be held liable for copyright infringement.

March 4, 2001 &mdash; Forwarding email in Australia becomes illegal with the passing of the Digital Agenda Act, since it is seen as a technical infringement of personal copyright.

June 22, 2001 &mdash; European Council finalizes an international cybercrime treaty. This is the first treaty addressing criminal offenses committed over the Internet. and adopts it on 9 November.

November 9, 2001 &mdash; European Council adopts an international cybercrime treaty. This is the first treaty addressing criminal offenses committed over the Internet.

2002
December 4, 2002 &mdash; The Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002, Pub. L. 107-321, 116 Stat. 2780 (Dec. 4, 2002) (codified at 17 U.S.C. §114) is enacted.

2004
January 1, 2004 &mdash; The CAN-SPAM Act goes into effect.

2006
October 6, 2006 &mdash; The [Trademark Dilution Review Act of 2006]], Pub. L. 109-312, 120 Stat. 1730 (Oct. 6, 2006) is enacted.