INTERNET’S BEATING HEART:
When ‘the network of networks’ was in its infancy, it was genuinely believed that it would challenge, or even render completely obsolete any kind of traditional governance. Nation-states have no jurisdiction over the anarchic, boundless, virtual self or world. Internet communities can run themselves.
Time has proven this to be an overly-romantic view. While the Internet has arguably gone some way towards shifting the balance of power from governments to individuals and groups, cyber-utopianism has largely fallen flat on its face. The leaderless network quickly erupted into fascist mob rule.
The much wider accessibility of the Internet to a broader range of users than the privileged and intellects it was solely available to in its early days, along with the removal of barriers it offers for the distribution of content, have reinforced the potential for corruption and intensified the need for regulation.
The sheer amount of academic writing exploring regulation options, like Lessig’s theory of four modalities of regulation and their application to cyberspace, along with government's efforts to regulate the Internet, both at the national and multi-state level, all point in the same direction:
The question has now largely shifted from whether we should regulate the Internet to how we should do it.
Although the plurality of interests, cultural sensitivities and norms will possibly never allow for one universal regulator of cyberspace, we can work towards a process of harmonization of governance.
One of the most favoured approaches seems to be a multi-tiered system of regulation with multiple stakeholders, including governments, intermediaries and of course users.
This kind of individual responsibility users have towards ‘rebuilding the dream’ of the Internet needs to be emphasized. If we perceive Internet as the ‘cyber realm of societies and collectives’ then the virtual society is the expansion of the real one.
Netizens then have a civic duty comparable to the one in the physical world. It should also be emphasized that in cyberspace, we can all be content providers and context providers. Precisely because we can occupy these roles, we are responsible. We are responsible for acting lawfully, morally and even I’d argue, aesthetically.
This can include anything from the content we share, to our online discourse and behaviour towards other users, always bearing in mind the understanding that virtual reality is still a public space much like the physical one. ‘If we want a better Internet the dream begins with your own screen’.
** Well, except if you’re a law student blogging about LCIT, that is.
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