Cybersite

And the Net now prospers precisely because of the absence of centralised rule-making authority. Everyone who can buy a computer and has access to the global telephone network is free to establish a node on the Net. Everyone is free to create editorial value by pointing to others8217; creations. Lots of systems have different rules governing user behavior, and users at least in most countries are free to leave any system whose rules they find oppressive.

Some systems demand full identification from users; some allow or even encourage anonymity. Some impose editorial controls to create quot;kid-friendlyquot; or quot;lawyer-friendlyquot; environments; others act more like common carriers who accept all comers. Some require and enforce promises to abide by traditionalcopyright laws; others require all participants to waive claims that interfere with redistribution.

This decentralized decision-making has helped to make it possible for large numbers of people with different goals to get interconnected. But the problem of collective action remains and, indeed, grows more urgent as the Net becomes larger and more complex. Anarchy, after all, has its costs.

There are activities that, when permitted even in only a few online venues, impose costs on all others, and against which individuals may want to protect themselves. Spamming is a form of wrongdoing that may be beyond the capacity of a particular local sysop to control but that can make lots of users of lots of other systems miserable. Some Web pages may invade your privacy on contact. Some parts of the electronic forest path may even be conducive to highway robbery. As the global village transforms itself into a complex electronic city, crime cannot be far behind. If the natural result of decentralised activities onthe Net were the development of unpredictable technical environments and unsafe social spaces, then calls for top-down, centralised forms of collective action would become louder and more persuasive.

Moreover, the Net can be used to facilitate communications among individuals whose online actions impose harm even on those who only frequent the nonvirtual world. Most real-world communities will want to be assured that the Net will not be used systematically to undercut their security. Online tax havens could harm the physical infrastructure of local communities that lose tax revenues. Online conspiracies to commit violence in the real world will surely draw a response from the potential victims. Accordingly, both users of the Net and all of those affected by their actions will likely demand some form of quot;governancequot; or quot;orderquot; that prevents wrongdoing.

The key question now posed is whether that governance must take the traditional form of centralised, top-down lawmaking or whether, instead, the nature ofthe Net allows decentralized creation of another, very different, form of public order.

Excerpted from the archives of the Cyberspace Law Institute. The complete paper is at cli.org/emdraft.html