Law in the Internet Society

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AndreiVoinigescuPaper1Internet20 8 - 18 Nov 2008 - Main.AndreiVoinigescu
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Factions in a Digital Age

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 Our ability to modify the physical architecture of the real world is still, fortunately, rather limited. But in a networked world, code is easy to modify. The owner of the switch has almost unlimited control over what is and isn't possible on the network. And, in the Internet as it exists now, ownership of the switches is concentrated among a relatively small number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), most of whom are commercial entities. This creates an environment where a single ISP (or a few acting in concert) can regulate human behavior much more completely than the most determined police states of the Cold War era ever could. Comcast's unilateral decision to throttle BitTorrent traffic across its network is a pale hint of what we can expect to see as switching hardware develops to allow real-time deep packet inspection of all network traffic and the owners of the switches become increasingly savvy about the power they control.

Network Architecture as a Check on the Power of Code

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<		End to end encryption of networked communications and government regulation offer only partial solutions to the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of the switch owners. Encryption does not disguise the parties to a communication or their pattern of interaction. Credit cards would allow most internet commerce to continue even if ISPs decided to block all encrypted communication. Regulating the switch owners, meanwhile, only transfers control of the switches to political incumbents who would undoubtedly be tempted to employ it to consolidate their own power. And regulation is reactive, not preemptive; some switch owners will be willing to risk the consequences of the law if the immediate rewards are large enough.
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>		End to end encryption of networked communications and government regulation offer only partial solutions to the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of the switch owners. Encryption does not disguise the parties to a communication or their pattern of interaction. Regulating the switch owners, meanwhile, only transfers control of the switches to political incumbents who would undoubtedly be tempted to employ it to consolidate their own power. And regulation is reactive, not preemptive; some switch owners will be willing to risk the consequences of the law if the immediate rewards are large enough.
 To stop factions from abusing the unprecedented regulatory power of code in ways, we need a network where ownership and control of the switches is dispersed as widely as possible. In such a network, the power of code can only be employed through substantial populist consensus.

Revision 8r8 - 18 Nov 2008 - 02:32:35 - AndreiVoinigescu
Revision 7r7 - 17 Nov 2008 - 15:57:04 - AndreiVoinigescu
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