Tangled Web
Plattner, Marc F.
Tangled Web The law of the jungle does not apply. by Marc F. Plattner The advent of the Internet has undoubtedly affected many aspects of our lives: Work, learning, shopping, political campaigns,...
...Realizing that the assets of its French subsidiary were vulnerable to seizure, and that its executives would be subject to legal processes if they traveled to France, Yahoo yielded and withdrew the Nazi materials from its auction sites...
...Its impact may someday come to be seen as even more significant than that of the telephone or the automobile...
...The most important factor here is language...
...Initially, Yahoo responded that French law had no authority over what material was put on computer servers outside French jurisdiction, that the laws of one nation should not force Yahoo to change its worldwide content, and that it would be impossible for Yahoo to identify and filter out French visitors to its websites...
...But the U.S...
...But the advantages of a bordered Internet are not limited to its ability to respond more efficiently to diversity among nations...
...The key point of control over the structure of the Internet is what is called "root authority"葉he power to award (and to revoke) Internet addresses...
...But as Goldsmith and Wu recount, the project failed, not because other governments invaded Sealand, but because they were able to put pressure on the intermediaries that are essential to doing business on the web...
...And the answer given by their book is a resounding No...
...But Goldsmith and Wu go beyond simply cautioning that the "territorial state" is alive and kicking and can be ignored only at our peril...
...In its early days this web auction site operated as a "virtual community," with self-policing by a "Feedback Forum" that praised honest participants and sought to shame abusive ones, as well as informal dispute resolution by a kindly figure known as "Uncle Griff...
...by Marc F. Plattner The advent of the Internet has undoubtedly affected many aspects of our lives: Work, learning, shopping, political campaigns, friendship, even relations between the sexes...
...These political realities, moreover, include not just the censorship imposed by dictatorial governments, such as those in China and Saudi Arabia, but the actions of democratic states as well...
...Although the Internet was initially developed by engineers working under Defense Department contracts, for many years the U.S...
...By the end of 2002, less than 50 percent of the pages on the World Wide Web were in English...
...But the judge, after appointing a team of Internet experts to investigate the matter, concluded that available technology would, indeed, allow Yahoo to screen out most of its French users, and threatened to impose heavy fines if this were not done...
...Responding to this view, Goldsmith and Wu acknowledge that most people's daily lives are more influenced by social norms and markets than by law...
...They have succeeded not only in writing a fascinating account of the development of the Internet, but in illuminating the fundamental character of the world in which we live...
...A decade later, it is clear that these Internet Utopians had fallen victim to "illusions of a borderless world"葉he subtitle of this wonderful new book by law professors Jack Goldsmith of Harvard and Tim Wu of Columbia...
...In 1997, the Internet Society, a private group composed largely of Internet founders, launched an effort (in collaboration with the International Telecommunications Union, a specialized U.N...
...The United States subsequently turned over the administration of this area to a private international body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN...
...The notion of a "borderless world" turns out to be little more than hi-tech utopianism...
...More broadly still, Goldsmith and Wu argue, eBay's successful operation depends upon the enforceability of contracts, which only government can effectively ensure...
...Marc F. Plattner is vice president of the National Endowment for Democracy...
...In 1999 he allowed an Internet entrepreneur to set up a bank of servers and "to rent computer space to anyone who wanted to escape the clutches of government"容specially web gambling operations and pornographers...
...As eBay grew, however, and became phenomenally successful, it also attracted users bent on large-scale fraud...
...In important ways, they contend, it is a good thing that, instead of a borderless world, we are moving toward a "bordered Internet...
...According to Goldsmith and Wu, however, ICANN remains under contract to the Department of Commerce, which has no intention of relinquishing America's root authority, despite complaints from other governments...
...And there is every sign that this trend will continue...
...Moreover, as is true of any other medium, people want the information conveyed by the Internet tailored to their own interests, and these interests continue to be determined, to a considerable extent, by the place where they live...
...The short history of the Internet gives us a crash course in understanding why anarchy cannot work...
...Goldsmith and Wu also address the governance question that lends their book its title...
...agency) to take control of Internet policy for itself and various affiliated entities...
...During the 1990s, however, as the commercial prospects of the Internet became evident, disputes over the locus of control began to emerge...
...For the same reason, we should not expect some form of "global governance" to readily and benignly supersede the nation-state...
...The point man for the American effort was none other than Ira Magazin-er, President Clinton's Oxford buddy who had been appointed "Internet czar" after working with Hillary Clinton on the administration's failed health care project...
...One attempt to get around this fact was the establishment of a "data haven" on an abandoned concrete platform in the North Sea that the British had used to fire on German bombers during World War II...
...The authors show how local Internet service providers, search engine companies, credit card companies, and banks all may come within the reach of national laws whose enforcement, even if erratic, makes it unprofitable for these intermediaries to violate them...
...In fact, Goldsmith and Wu open their story with the attempt of a French court in 2000 to prevent Yahoo from allowing Nazi memorabilia featured on its auction site to be visited by French web surfers, in violation of a French ban on trafficking in Nazi goods...
...A crucial lesson that Goldsmith and Wu drive home is that cyberspace is not a truly independent realm, inasmuch as it always remains dependent on hardware that exists in real places somewhere on the globe and is, therefore, within the reach of governments...
...The champions of globalization typically do not call for the abolition of the nation-state, but relegate it to the position of "just one source of order among many...
...Illusions of a Borderless World byJack Goldsmith and Tim Wu Oxford, 240 pp., $28 named it Sealand and declared its independence from the United Kingdom...
...What is more, eBay called upon Congress to "send a message to cyber criminals throughout the world that the U.S...
...government can and will protect e-com-merce from criminal activity...
...It seems clear, then, that even in so globalized and elusive a realm as cyberspace, the nation-state remains the key player...
...But during the 1990s, an era of political innocence and the dotcom boom, many Internet enthusiasts believed it would bring about far greater changes溶othing less than the transformation of human communities...
...In a splendidly readable volume that bears absolutely no resemblance either to a law review article or a techie manual, they tell the story of the Internet's early days, the colorful characters who imagined and sought to guide its future, and the political realities that are ultimately "domesticating" it...
...Goldsmith and Wu illustrate the contribution of lawful national government by telling the story of the evolution of eBay...
...Contrary to predictions that English would be the overwhelmingly dominant language of the Internet, its share has been steadily declining: "In the late 1990s," write Goldsmith and Wu, "80 percent of online information was in English...
...government played a passive role, allowing the inventors of the Internet to exercise root authority...
...The main reason Internet content is increasingly becoming divided along geographical lines is not the strong arm of national law but the desire of Internet users to receive material that responds to their own needs and tastes...
...government had other ideas, and it successfully reasserted its own ultimate claim to root authority...
...Yet they insist that the state supplies positive goods容ven for Internet communities葉hat cannot be obtained from any other source...
...In 1966 it was taken over by a retired British Army major who Who Controls the Internet...
...The key question, they assert, "is whether such sources of rules and governance can function apart from an underlying system of territorial government and physical coercion...
...They are fully cognizant of the damage that not only dictatorial but also democratic states can do to the Internet through heavy-handed or misguided intervention...
...It found itself forced to respond by hiring law-enforcement professionals, and by 2005 its full-time security staff reached 800...
...By enabling people all over the world to connect directly with one another, it would strengthen individuals and civil society, weaken the power of governments, render national borders irrelevant, and make the territorial state obsolete...
Vol. 12 • November 2006 • No. 10
