Law of the sea convention offers best and most comprehensive protection for underseas cables

States and private owners may assert claims or jurisdiction over undersea infrastructure on various grounds. States may assert claims on behalf of injured parties incorporated or present within their jurisdiction. Pipeline and cable owners, meanwhile, have direct recourse to traditional admiralty remedies in national courts that retain jurisdiction over the vessels and persons responsible for undersea depredations.⁸² However, under international law, a corporate person whose property has been damaged possesses rights that are merely derivative of the rights of its state of nationality. As a broad based source of international maritime rights and obligations, the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC, or colloquially, the "Constitution of the Oceans") ⁸⁴ currently contains the most robust provisions for claims asserted by either affected states or subsea proprietors.

The legal status of pipelines in waters beyond national urisdiction has been associated with the status of submarine cables. Without the LOSC, two operative treaties for international cables exist: the 1884 International Convention for Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables (Cable Convention), and the 1958 Geneva Convention on the High Seas.⁸⁷ These treaties deal with laying and repairing cables on the high seas-not in Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) and upon the continental shelf8.8 Moreover, they do not afford commercial owners significant deterrence against depredations.