Geography, Laws, and the Internet

Sara Chan writes: "This week's edition of The Economist has the cover story and lead editorial devoted to how geography affects the Internet after all. The whole of China is basically firewalled. In France, Yahoo! is appealing the court ruling that banned its selling Nazi memorabilia. In Iran, ISPs are required to block immoral sites. Each country wants to impose its own laws on others, of course without reciprocation. The editorial concludes thus: "The likely outcome is that, like shipping and aviation, the Internet will be subject to a patchwork of overlapping regulations, with local laws that respect local sensibilities, supplemented by higher-level rules governing cross-border transactions and international standards." Not all new, but worth pondering."

Comments

It's just the beginning

[boaworm]

I dont think there's any real need to worry about this yet. The Internet is a very new fenomena compared to many other media we have, say newspapers, books, tv etc. Things does get better with age, and the Internet will probably selfadjust to a suitable level.
What I mean is.. there's no need to panic because some things are not they way they should just now. Criticism on the internet often referes to bad/unsuitable things published to the masses.

As an example, today in a large swedish online newspaper, a reporter found a huge "scoop". He found out that one of the Universities of sweden was providing computer resources to swedish nazists. After a bit of research, it came out that the university was running an Irc-server (dalnet) where the nazis held "online-meetings".

Noone would consider it a scoop that a bunch of criminals phoned each other over the telephone network, or that they sent snailmail.

The Internet will get integrated into our everyday routines, and its use will get balanced to what it's good for.

And where's the problem with china being firewalled, isn't that all up to them ? I bet there are firewalls protecting western world internet resources against china as well...

Companies vs Governments

[truthsearch]

In the US, the corporations are trying to impose regulations to get maximum profit, while the government (for now) has mostly stayed out of it because of respect for free speech. Outside the US, where speech is not so free, governments will try to regulate in accordance with their countries beliefs. I hardly think this can be compared to shipping and aviation.

Regarding the cover story, the hinderences caused by distance will (like everything in the computer field) be overcome by technology. Data traveling from PC to server and back at the speed of light can have very little difference in travel time when the computers are next to each other compared to opposite sides of the planet. Of course we're far from this (optics direct to the computer, instant switching, etc.), but we'll get there, just like everything else. We'll look back and laugh at cover stories like this in the decades to come.

Re:Companies vs Governments

[iCEBaLM]

He wasn't arrested for speaking.

Code is speech.

The finger was pointed at him by Adobe - a corporation.

And your government buzzed into action like the little lapdogs they are:

Adobe: JUMP!
US Govt: How high master?

Corporations pushed for the DMCA.

Your government passed it...

-- iCEBaLM

That's fine....

[baptiste]

I figure if a country wants to firewall itself - fine that's their problem (and their citizens) But France's attitude is a dsigrace. If they don't want their citizens to see stuff - then its up to them to filter it, not Yahoo's. I'm all for the having a web site be subject to the laws of the land where it is LOCATED. If its farmed into differnet countries, then all those laws will apply and the company has to deal with teh overlap. Proxies and cache don't count.

We all have our problems. But in this case, its easy - you don't want your citizens to see something? Its up to you to restrict them and deal with teh consequences like being voted out of office (if your citizens have that right.

Yes in an ideal world everything would be free and all would be free to see it - but that just isn't gonna happen. Sure, we can bitch about China firewalling and filtering everything - but that's life in a communist country.

Yes, I'm American so I can take this stance since my net use is pretty much wide open unless the FBI has a bad day, but beyond that, as long as some other country doesn't try to stick their noses into an American companies business (yeah right) I'm happy :)

What did youi expect?

[Fleet Admiral Ackbar]

When the United States can't be bothered to maintain the pretense of freedom for the Net, (e.g. DMCA, Carnivore, et al) why should other countries?

We (just meeting the USians here) should be setting an example for freedom, not censorship and control.

Re:Just wait for satallite access

[Tackhead]

> > "the idea that the Internet liberates you from geography is a myth".
>
> This part of the article will be a non issue once satallite internet takes off in a few years.

Owned and operated, pray tell, from citizens of where?

Unfortunate Difference

[gunner800]

In aviation, it's relatively easy to avoid straying into a given legal jurisdiction. With shipping, a route can be planned ahead of time with known jurisdictions. It's not so simple for the 'net.

I live in Texas, and operate a website hosted in Florida. Easy enough, two jurisdictions to worry about, both in the same country. But my cable modem service provider is Time Warner; I have no idea where my insidious signals get bounced on their way to Florida.

And, of course, there's the people who visit the site. I get hits from every continent, and it's been shown that it's not possible to accurately block an entire large geographic block. If some country out there decides to be as arrogant as the US, I'll be obliged to obey the laws of some country I didn't even intend to contact.

The Economist's story is good, but the conclusion should be restated for brevity: we're hosed.