THE A-B-CS OF TARGETING: A FORMULA FOR RESOLVING PERSONAL JURISDICTION-INTERNET ISSUES WITHIN THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

Introduction If the Internet is an explosion, we are living smack-dab in the middle of the mushroom cloud. In less than four years, there will be over 765 million Internet users. 1 By 2003, consumer e-commerce revenues could approach $ 150 billion and annual business-to-business e-commerce revenues could reach $ 2.8 trillion. 2 At present, more than five million e-mail messages are sent around the world each minute. 3 Indeed, cybergrowth has been compared to bacterial replication and rabbit procreation. 4 Just as the Internet boom has impacted nearly every aspect of daily life, it has also affected traditional, property-based law. The growing pains associated with this exponential legal transformation have prompted one court to observe that applying established legal concepts to cyberspace "is somewhat like trying to board a moving bus." 5 Within the District of Massachusetts, Judge Nancy Gertner puts it this way: To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, as far as the Internet is concerned, not only is there perhaps "no there there," the "there" is everywhere where there is Internet access. When business is transacted over a computer network via a Web-site accessed by a computer in Massachusetts, it takes place as much in Massachusetts, literally or figuratively, as it does anywhere. 6 Civil procedure in general, and the doctrine of personal jurisdiction in particular, is no exception. Thus, it is no coincidence that, in recent years, the variety of lower federal courts that have tried to apply familiar personal jurisdictional principles to a new computerized world have ...