[ringo]

Where do you think the internet is?

Most countries can access web sites from every other country.

How do you think the law should apply to what goes on online?

Should any country or other group have jurisdiction over the Internet?

What should happen when someone from one country attacks a computer in another?

What do you think would be fair? What do you think would be best?

[nonhuman]

I think the internet should be beyond national borders, and it should not be controlled by any country or government. Ideally it would be, essentially, a soverign entity in it's own right, of which everyone is a citizen, whose laws are decided in a truely democratic style.

Of course this will never happen, especially as long as the internet is tied to servers that exist within countries. Maybe if it were one giant peer-to-peer network, or if the main servers were on satelites or in international waters or something... Or on the moon!

[fromthecloud]

Hmmm...Moon Net.

[keekeeree]

Under Al Gore's backporch.

[ironknee]

I own part of the internet. Are you interested in buying some? would have worked in 1997,

The Internet is where ever I am. ommmm

[juanvaldes]

it is a bunch of computers. it is where those computers are. not to hard really...

[ringo]

Originally posted by juanvaldes:
it is a bunch of computers. it is where those computers are. not to hard really...

That's what I thought, but if a computer in the US breaks into a computer in China, where did it happen?

Or if it's illegal for me to share information with people in another country, am I bound to not make that information available to anyone, just in case someone from that country happens to come to my website?

What if a country makes it illegal to display the @ symbol, does that mean nobody can use @ on the internet anymore?

That's extreme, but substitute the @ symbol with copyrighted material, harmful code, powerful crypto tools, etc.

If local laws can't be applied to the internet then one of two things has got to happen: Either no internet laws will be made (because none can be enforced) or more countries will try to do what China is trying to do by butting up a national firewall.

Not enough has happened to force that kind of decision, but something will sooner or later and I can't decide which of those two things is the best one to do or even which is likely.

[juanvaldes]

if your standing on the border and you punch someone on the other side who has juristiction?

[ringo]

Originally posted by juanvaldes:
if your standing on the border and you punch someone on the other side who has juristiction?

And if the "other side" is thousands of miles away and there are no laws that stop people from hitting other people in my country?

[juanvaldes]

Originally posted by ringo:

And if the "other side" is thousands of miles away and there are no laws that stop people from hitting other people in my country?

then were right back where we started

[Sven G]

The Internet is both nowhere, somewhere and everywhere, to various degrees - and, above all, it should be decentralized and free, at the service of human needs.

[Mulattabianca]

internet is or should be everywhere.

and the laws limiting it should be internationally agreed. which they will never be. but once e.g. in italy a law says something about the net, i can always have a spanish or anything else domain; if my server is in spain physically and for suffix, i should agree only to the spanish laws even if my site was in english or italian only?

[PorscheBunny]

If it were up your ass, you'd know where it was

[OldManMac]

Originally posted by PorscheBunny:
If it were up your ass, you'd know where it was

Then it obviously couldn't be a supercomputer!

[deekay1]

Originally posted by PorscheBunny:
If it were up your ass...

if it's not going to be decentralized pretty soon, that's exactly where it's going to wind up...

[arrested502]

<rich evil tycoon voice> I own the internet, along with my hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place, and The Pennsylvania Railroad!! </rich evil tycoon voice>

<brooklyn accent> (grabbing crotch) "I got your internet right here buddy!!!</brooklyn accent>

MikeM

[Phanguye]

i downloaded teh internet teh other day so now it is in my computer and you cant have it

[:XI:]

i would have loved to have been on the internet at the start. I would have printed it out and put it in an envelope.
Imagine teeling people "when i was a kid i saw the whole internet!"
instead of the sprawling mess it is now.
the internet is obviously everywhere.
if someone in china hacked a computer in america the crime happened in china but the crime scene is in america so� erm� it happened in both places.

[undotwa]

The internet is just a bunch of computers networked together.

Should there be any limits on whats on the internet? The only limits should be whats allowed to be stored on your personal hard drive. You are just letting anyone access your hard drive.... Domains are the only thing that should be provided by the government.

[ringo]

I want to bump this just once, in case anyone else has more to add.

Originally posted by undotwa:
Should there be any limits on whats on the internet? The only limits should be whats allowed to be stored on your personal hard drive. You are just letting anyone access your hard drive.... Domains are the only thing that should be provided by the government.

OK, this makes sense because you've reduced the problem to a physical one again. A hard drive has to be *somewhere* so you have clear jurisdiction in each individual country. US laws would govern what's on a US hard drive, French laws would govern what's on a French hard drive, etc...

But what happens when the contents of the French hard drive are illegal in the US? Let's say that the French hard drive has copyrighted works, classified information, illegal pornagraphy, or a collection of virii.

Is there any way that the US could prevent a user in the US from violating local laws without limiting access to computers outside its borders? The minute I access any of the information on the French computer, I'm violating US law by storing that information in memory long enough to display it on my screen.

That leaves a country with rigid information laws two options, either selective filtering (which is unlikely to work because it depends on machine intelligence) or national firewalling.

Is it better to allow freedom of information, even if that information is certain to cause harm to someone else, or to cripple the internet by enforcing imaginary borders that mirror physical ones?

It seems inevitable that a choice will be made. I'm just not sure if either option would do more good than harm or if there are other possibilities that I'm not seeing.

Is our freedom to lawfully communicate on the internet peaking? Will out grandchildren have the same kind of connectivity that we take for granted?

[Xeo]

I would have voted for nowhere, but that's not entirely accurate. It's actually 20 miles south of nowhere. No really, I heard it on Nickelodeon once. I know it's true. They had a map and everything, and sure enough, it was excactly 20 miles south of nowhere.

[Millennium]

"Where" has no meaning, as far as the Internet is concerned; it is not a place. We commonly use metaphors of places, because it is convenient to do so, but it's not actually a place in and of itself; it doesn't exist in our minds or our computers, but because of these things. "Where" does not even really apply.

It's kind of like time. Let's say that somehow, time is someday discovered to be broken up into finite points, which I'll call "moments" here for lack of a better term. In such a system, though, moments would be static; nothing changes in a moment, nothing happens. We exist between the moments; that is where things happen. But when is "between the moments", if time consists of quantized moments?

[InterfaceGuy]

I thought the internet exists in Al Gore's office, but I don't see any option for that in the poll...

[xi_hyperon]

I'm not sure, but I couldn't get online last night. My browser just kept telling me that such and such server can not be found. I think I might have crashed the internet. Who fixed it? Do I have to pay something?

[MrBenn]

There is no spoon.

[undotwa]

Originally posted by ringo:
I want to bump this just once, in case anyone else has more to add.



OK, this makes sense because you've reduced the problem to a physical one again. A hard drive has to be *somewhere* so you have clear jurisdiction in each individual country. US laws would govern what's on a US hard drive, French laws would govern what's on a French hard drive, etc...

But what happens when the contents of the French hard drive are illegal in the US? Let's say that the French hard drive has copyrighted works, classified information, illegal pornagraphy, or a collection of virii.

Is there any way that the US could prevent a user in the US from violating local laws without limiting access to computers outside its borders? The minute I access any of the information on the French computer, I'm violating US law by storing that information in memory long enough to display it on my screen.

That leaves a country with rigid information laws two options, either selective filtering (which is unlikely to work because it depends on machine intelligence) or national firewalling.

Is it better to allow freedom of information, even if that information is certain to cause harm to someone else, or to cripple the internet by enforcing imaginary borders that mirror physical ones?

It seems inevitable that a choice will be made. I'm just not sure if either option would do more good than harm or if there are other possibilities that I'm not seeing.

Is our freedom to lawfully communicate on the internet peaking? Will out grandchildren have the same kind of connectivity that we take for granted?

Western countries have to agree to respect the laws that the hard drive resides in, simple. If Child pron is illegal in the US, and not illegal in Belgium (not saying it isn't), child pornography web sites can reside in belgium broadcasting their material. However, in the united states, it would be illegal to 'download' any of this material - because then it will be stored on your hard drive - which is illegal.