This paper looks at the property status of digital files, such as electronic documents, under English law. We argue that, while mere information is rightly not considered property, digital files are not mere information. Instead, they are distinct virtual objects that exist at the logical – or software – layer of a computer system. Property law could recognise digital files as a new, third kind of thing, alongside things in possession and in action. Doing so might help resolve disputes over access to digital files, by providing proprietary remedies similar to those available for paper documents.

THE recent and high-profile decisions of the Court of Justice (Case C-333/14, ECLI: EU:C:2015:845) and of the First Division of the Inner House of the Court of Session ([2016] CSIH 77) in The Scotch Whisky Association and Others v The Lord Advocate and The Advocate General for Scotland have shed further light both on the role of national courts in cases where Member States invoke the protection of public health to justify derogations from the TFEU provisions on the free movement of goods and on the application of the proportionality test. The model of free movement provided in the Treaty is not one that guarantees an entirely untrammelled freedom of trade across the EU or the automatic precedence of common-market objectives. While Article 34 TFEU provides for the removal of national obstacles of a non-fiscal nature, Article 36 TFEU allows Member States, in the absence of harmonisation, to argue a number of public-interest grounds to justify national measures that, in principle, contravene Article 34 TFEU. The protection of public health ranks very prominently in this list of interests. However, although it is for the Member States to decide the appropriate level of health protection that they wish to ensure (C-174/82, Sandoz [1983] E.C.R. 2445), the national action must be proportionate and national authorities must select the action that is the least restrictive of intra-Union trade (Case 40/82, Commission v UK [1984] E.C.R. 283). The outcome in The Scotch Whisky Association case has highlighted the difficulties involved in choosing among alternatives the least restrictive measure that would achieve the public-health objectives of the national legislation. Moreover, it has demonstrated clearly, in these difficult times for the EU, that EU law can be interpreted and applied to safeguard sensitive national policies.

Throughout the Rhodesian crisis it has been repeatedly asserted that the Unilateral Declaration of Independence constituted treason. In the House of Commons on 12 November 1965, the Attorney-General himself said:

It is right that I should point out in general terms that there is abundant authority for the conclusion that the conduct of the kind that has taken place is treasonable.