Why the Net doesn't belong to America

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The Net shouldn't belong to anyone...

I think you're wrong in calling for more international coalitions to regulate the Internet. Everything that's good that's come about because of the Internet is because no single government, corporation or individual can assert full authority over it.

So what if online gambling is illegal in the U.S., but U.S. citizens can still access offshore gambling sites? Is that a bad thing? While the U.S. could theoretically block such sites, it wouldn't because of that would require ISPs to censor the web, which is too much to ask from a technological and political stand point. A more totalitarian state like China has more power to censor its viewers, but it too has to face the consequences of crippling the Internet in that country.

What I'm saying is that the anarchist model of the Internet works well by nature at protecting liberterian ideals. It is the only feasible model of a liberterian society that is not completely at the mercy of a ruling government. Physical territory can be controlled by force. If you want to silence a rebellion taking place in physical space, you simply roll in some tanks. It's very easy. On the other hand, if a rebellion is taking place in virtual space, it is much harder because you have to map the virtual to the physical, and such a mapping will often be defined by scattered regions all over the world.

So, to control the virtual space, you need the cooperation of the governing entities of all those scattered regions. As long as you don't have unilateral cooperation between all the governments in the world (which would be a very scary place), the Internet remains a relatively safe place for a liberterian society to flourish.

Now of course, that doesn't take into consideration the changing landscape of the Internet, and how certain companies (like Google) now own (or at least influence) a huge amount of virtual real estate. Right now, Google is like the USA of the Internet. It doesn't control the world, but sometimes it seems like it does. Still, unlike the real world, netizens are not forced to obey Google's laws, and they can go elsewhere if Google's policies become repressive.

Posted by: Allstar_z   Posted on: 02/04/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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