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There are three major purposes of the present study: (1) to understandthe nature of cyberspace; (2) to investigate the social reality of cybercrime;and (3) to constructs some possile strategies for government to manage cybercrime. To achieve the research goals, the study took a multi-disciplinary approach to explore the subject. Our perspectives include legal theory, sociology of law, criminology, spacial theory, contemporary social philosophy and economics. Problem structuring in public policy was utilized as a methodology to developthe theoretical framework and hyptheses for the research. An empirical analysis was then designed to further examine the researchhypotheses. In the empirical analysis, cyberspace was classified into three categories based on the nature of its accessibility: public, specified and private spaces. Among the five target groups (legislators'' assistants, judges,consumers in fast food restaurants, colleges students, and internet users), the research found that their attitudes towards the 19 selected deviant or deviant-to-be behaviors in cyberspace varied. For instance, legislators'' assistantsand judges had lower tolerance than internet useers to most of the behaviors.However, no matter which group one belonged to, people tended to have lessagreement for "mala prohibita" behaviors than "mala in se" behaviors. The results also indicated that regardless of the nature of deviant behabior,deviant behaviors occurring in specified cyberspace were more likely to activate debates than those in public and private cyberspaces. At last, this research reviewed the laws and regulations in Taiwan relatedto cybercrime in general and the 19 selected behavior in specific. Along with the empirical findings and legal literature review, the present studyproposed a multi-dimensional model of structuring the problem of cybercrime. We argue that strategies for government to managing cybercrime would be more appropriate and feasible if the public consensus and the nature of cyberspaceare both taken into a serous consideration when constructing the problem ofcybercrime. The policy implication was further discussed in detail at the end of the study.
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