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

[Norbert Bollow]

Paul Lehto <lehto.paul at gmail.com> wrote:

> Even now, when you have taken
> the time to respond, you have not pointed to a single instance or even
> a likely instance where the internet functions without any law to
> support its operations.

On the contrary, I have pointed to Libya. And I have described
a (rather typical) kind of ISP-customer business relationship
which does not rely on a "law" framework for being able to
function.

> If you did, you'd be pointing to an all-cash economy

As the recent posting of Daniel Kalchev illustrates, that kind
of situation is not incompatible with internet services being
commercially provided.

> and a key feature of the internet -- transactions over great
> distance -- would be greatly hampered or defeated

I agree that facilitating transactions which involve "making a
payment via the Internet" (in the sense of a transfer of money)
requires a functioning legal framework to exist somewhere in the
world. This however does not in any way contradict anything that
I have written. The Internet has many purposes and functions
besides facilitation of e-commerce.

> Even for non-commercial internet activity, there needs to be
> payment for internet connectivity

So what? Even in countries and situations where the government
and the legal system have collapsed entirely, as is currently
the case in Libya, some aspects of the economy are still able to
function, because people are able to figure out how to conduct
the necessary transactions to pay for some kinds of things even
in the absence of any support from a functioning legal system or
functioning other aspects of government.

Another important point is that goodwill, respect and attention are
currencies that are effectively used to pay for many services in the
Internet context. Transactions involving these kinds of currencies
can also happen rather independently of any kind of regulatory or
other government efforts to facilitate them.

(I'm not claiming that an economy is possible without some kind of
money or cash-equivalent physical goods. But not all activites of
non-government actors have commercial motives. And then there are
commercial activities where the users of a service pay collectively
in a way that is not of monetary kind. And there are commercial
activities where the payment is of monetary kind but happens quite
independently of any governmental "contract law" framework.)

> I'll mail you $100US if you can show a real example of the above.

Well, I believe the examples that I gave to be valid, but I don't
expect to be able to convince you that this is the case. And even
if it should turn out that you are (contrary to the impression that
I've gotten so far) able to follow arguments that don't fit into
the ideological framework that you've been using so far, it would
cost me much more than $100 worth of my time to debate this with you.
So that conditional promise of $100US, especially at the US dollar's
current exchange rate to the Swiss Franc, is not of interest to me.

I'm withdrawing from this particular conversation at this point.

Greetings,
Norbert
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