Code and other laws of cyberspace (original) (raw)
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SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Private ordering is in vogue in legal scholarship. Nowhere is this clearer than on the Internet. Legal scholars who study the Internet talk freely about new forms of governance tailored to the specific needs of the Net. Only rarely are these "governance" models ones that involve a significant role for government as classically envisioned.
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« We should like to stress the State's vital obligation to intervene at a time when, in our opinion, deserting the Internet and withdrawing from the field of regulation to such a point that it no longer even decides the general framework, would notably put at risk public order, fundamental liberties and other basic values ». Yves POULLET PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 1. POSITIONING THE PROBLEM * This paper was presented in the context of a conference organized by the Universities of Torino (Italia) and Yale (USA).
THE INTERNET’S UNHOLY MARRIAGE TO CAPITALISM-POL 1001 INTRODUCTION TO POLITICS
INTRODUCTON The coming of the information technology by the internet was seen as a break through to the freedom and knowledge of the masses where citizens would be empowered and given one politics avenue to voice their political rights. However today the internet is in a marriage with Capitalism which really very interesting and raises the question,”Why and where did it all go wrong or start”. How did the government see the internet turning the tables to make a public good go into the hands of the private sector yet it was public funds that played a major role in its development? The blame can be put on the public who were not supportive or even so no need in securing the technology by denying private companies controlling it for profit. So in looking at the article critically will help relation the role of government in the public sphere of its citizens and from evaluating it one can say the interests if the people if they are a threat to government there is always concern and hence the need to control the internet. CRITIQUE The article raises issues about how America over the last two decades saw the growth and development of the internet age. There are many active players level like Facebook, Amazon, Google, and EBay. The internet was seen as a break through to freedom, however the full impact of its future has not become apparent although it has been a digital revolution, it has failed to deliver on much of its promises as was expected to be able to provide a competitive atmosphere for markets, accountable businesses and even open up government by ending corruption, inequality and increased happiness. What is very interesting is that with all the excitement in the beginning, the information available to everyone would break barriers to censorship and existing institutions would be open to scrutiny. The economic aspect of the capitalist society has taken over the internet subjecting it to a means of capital accumulation and what was a public sphere is gradually becoming close to monopolistic companies. Although the argument is not about what is good for the public wealth, there is a strong case that if it is left in private hands then there should be a better way of developing the internet around capital accumulation for the public good. In a capitalist environment the forces of the market would dictate free trade regardless of the negative externalities.
2020
The entanglement of the Internet with the daily practices of governments, companies, institutions, and individuals means that the processes that shape the Internet also shape society. In this dissertation, I study the norms that shape the Internet’s underlying structure through its transnational governance. Norms are the ‘widely-accepted and internalised [sic] principles or codes of conduct that indicate what is deemed to be permitted, prohibited, or required of agents within a specific community’ (Erskine and Carr 2016, 87). Internet governance is the development, coordination, and implementation of policies, technologies, protocols, and standards. Internet governance produces a global and interoperable Internet functioning as a general-purpose communication network in transnational governance bodies. I examine four cases of norm conflict and evolution in three key Internet governance institutions: the Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF); the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN); and the Réseaux IP Européens Network (RIPE). I show how social and legal norms evolve and are introduced, subverted, and resisted by participants in Internet governance processes with distinct and dynamic values and interests, in order to develop policies, technologies, and standards to produce an interconnected Internet. I leverage notions and insights from science and technology studies and international relations to illuminate how a sociotechnical imaginary—the combination of visions, symbols, and futures that exist in groups and society—architectural principles, and an entrenched norm function as instruments of metagovernance in the Internet infrastructure. This way, I demonstrate how a sociotechnical imaginary, values, and norms facilitate, instruct, and evaluate the norm setting processes in Internet governance. This dissertation is empirically grounded in the analysis of mailing lists; technical documents; policy documents; interviews and the extensive observation of governance meetings. I have operationalized this analysis using the following methods: quantitative descriptive analysis; network analysis; quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis, as well as in participant observation, including semi-structured interviews and ethnographic probes. The aim of this dissertation is to show how Internet governance happening in multistakeholder bodies, what I call private Internet governance, solely functions to increase interconnection between independent networks. In this process, the introduction of social and legal norms—such as human rights principles and data protection regulations that might hamper increased interconnection—is resisted by significantly represented stakeholders in the process. Ultimately, I argue that while the sociotechnical imaginary and architectural principles serve to legitimize this governance ordering, the entrenched norm, what I call the infrastructural norm that transcends singular institutions, guides the distributed private governance regime. The infrastructural norm of voluntary interconnection plays an instructing and evaluating role in the process of norm development and evolution in private Internet governance. The infrastructural norm is embedded in its institutional configuration, technological materiality, economical incentives, and supranational interest, and ties the private Internet governance regime together. In conclusion, I posit that the private Internet governance regime is designed and optimized for the narrow and limited role of increasing interconnection. As a result, the governance regime resists aligning Internet infrastructure with social or legal norms that might limit or hamper increasing interconnection.