[governance] regulating the digital space - whose laws apply, and whose do not

[Paul Lehto]

On 8/27/11, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> IMHO (and following Sala, Paul, Parminder et al...)
> The issue is not who/how should "regulate the Internet" but rather who/how
> can regulate commerce and the flow of goods, money, people, and information
> in an Internet enabled world.

If that's really the case, then your suggestion here amounts to
placing this group's task beyond any reasonable scope of the charter,
because "commerce and the flow of goods, money, people and
information" implicates (respectively),

WTO and GATT (flow of goods),

registration requirements in the USA for example for every dollar that
flows in or out of the country (flow of money),

immigration law at national borders (flow of people), and

trade secrecy law among other topics (flow of information, especially
restricted at national borders with trade secrecy/industrial espionage
involved).

Now, given that the flow of goods, money, people and owned-information
is fairly heavily regulated by almost all nation-states for usually
but not always good reasons, why would we have any cause for
despairing of the "difficulty" of internet policy or law?  Crime, for
example, has always been with us in all of these areas, and yet nobody
is complaining that the efforts of governments in the area of criminal
law is so fraught with difficulty that it ought not be attempted.  Yet
the suggestion of something quite like that is made here on this list
with regard to the internet.  Difficult!  Impossible!  <sigh>

The tech policy of free countries has been to experiment with nature
and culture by releasing technologies and then letting the law and
science catch up with the impacts caused by the technologies.

The argument that one ought to give up -- or at least find very
"difficult" -- the project of getting the law to do its perennial task
of catching up in the context of the global internet -- just because
of the varying approaches of all the different countries) is a concern
or objection not often heard in the area of goods in commerce (WTO
treaties, etc), immigration laws, flow of information, or the flow of
money.  In all of these areas, governments eventually all over the
world get to work and pass a fragmented, diverse, and "chaotically
varying" set of laws around the world, and nobody's seriously saying
we can't regulate commerce, immigration, money or owned-information
that way.

But when it comes to consumer protection on the internet, it seems
some think we need to draw the line here.  We can't tolerate allowing
democracies to have varying consumer protection laws, can we?  <satire
alert for quickly-scanning readers of this post.>  :)

> As we are seeing on this list and in the real world the difficulties of
> regulating activities in these areas both at the intra-national, national
> and global levels are rapidly outrunning the capacity of existing
> instrumentalities to respond.

No, not really.  "Existing instrumentalities" are unavoidably and
inherently behind the pace to the extent technology is allowed free
introduction to society without permits, which it nearly always is.

> National and global instititutions are
> currently going through various convoluted and ultimately futile processes
> to attempt to adapt.

Futile?  One certainly wants to give up when faced with futility.
However, there are few or no signs of giving up on the regulation of
global commerce by nations, immigration, money or
information-ownership regulation (IP law).

The criminal law is "convoluted and ultimately futile" process if the
goal is to eliminate crime.  Should we give up on that futile project
of the criminal law?

> New institutions are, as we speak, in the process of
> being developed.
> The role of Civil Society in this is not IMHO to argue about how existing
> institutions can adapt (or not) but rather to be working towards global
> institutions that reflect the basic values of civil society -- democratic
> governance, accountability, transparency, and so on.

Such global institutions, if democratic in nature, would be legitimate
but not necessary for good internet policy amongst existing nation
states.

If anyone thinks that projecting influence or power of civil society
is hard on the national governmental level, just try projecting power
or influence on a worldwide or global level, which is even harder.
Without paying strict attention to the full requirements of real
democracy, a globalized internet policy entity that nevertheless has
real legislative power (unlike us) is virtually guaranteed to be
dominated by business interests involved with the internet because
only they can cost justify the levels of investment necessary to be a
player in that global governance game.  Real grass roots folks have no
incentive to participate from a practical standpoint, but many do
because of the love of the issues or their importance.

Basically, without real global democracy, you have a PROFESSIONAL,
FULL-TIME business interest consortium that pays people to do policy
and governance, against a VOLUNTEER PART TIME force of grass roots
activists.  There's no fair match here, unless we can call the
question and submit it to a vote of the people.

Paul Lehto, J.D.

>
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t