Contemporary threats related to content processing in the cyberspace

The Internet, as a social medium has a wide spectrum of applications. In general, the cyberspace serves as a provider of services, a commercial platform and the arena of social networking. On one hand, the Internet offers unlimited possibilities with respect to the access to all sources of information but, on the other hand, it can generate a series of threats to the established social and legal order. The threats may pertain to systems, data security, computer programs, users' privacy and intellectual property. Although the problem is important socially as well as politically, until recently the Polish literature on the subject did not address the issue of counteracting and punishing offences related to electronic data processing widely enough. The motivation behind this paper was recent social discourse on the free flow of information on the Internet and the multiplicity of controversies accompanying this topic.