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

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?