6.805/STS085 Topic 9

Topic 9: Sovereignty

For class presentation on November 24

Government in real space is geographically bounded. Territories traditionally have defined the scope of government's legislative authority; and where governments have attempted to reach beyond territories, it has only been when behavior outside territories has affected life within the government's domain.

As mobility has increased, this model for sovereignty has been put under great strain. When people live in one area, yet work in another, and then send their kids to school in a third, a system of democratic government that restricts their influence to the first increasingly makes less and less sense. This has lead some scholars to question, even in real space, the exclusive reliance on geography as a basis for legislative jurisdiction, or citizenship participation.

In cyberspace, the problem is only worse. One's behavior while in cyberspace can affect many in many other jurisdictions. And while one is always also in real space while one is in cyberspace, the behavior in cyberspace is increasingly behavior that is not really regulated properly by any individual sovereign, or set of sovereigns. There is emerging in cyberspace an existence that is outside of the life of any particular real world sovereign.

The question for this section is what real space sovereigns can do about this. Their power, as much of the course will suggest, depends largely on the architecture of cyberspace. Different architectures, as this section will explore, will differently enable real space regulation. What mix between law, and architecture, and regimes of contract will best enable, or disable, local regulation. What are the tradeoffs between a regime that maximizes local regulation, and one that disables local regulation. How can arbitration structures bridge a gap between local and international regulation? What aspects of local sovereignty become threatened by the emergence of this international space? How can regimes use the architecture to control problems of extra-territoriality? Do we want local regulators anymore?

Advisor:

Mitch Kapor
mkapor@media.mit.edu

General readings (for the entire class):

Brian E. Carpenter, Architectural Principles of the Internet, Network Working Group RFC 1958 (June 6, 1996).
Sharon Eisner Gillett and Mitchell Kapor, The Self-governing Internet: Coordination by Design, in Coordination of the Internet, Brian Kahin and James Keller, ed., MIT Press, 1997
Jack Goldsmith, Against Cyberanarchy

Additional readings and resources:

Paulina Borsook, How Anarchy Works: On location with the masters of the metaverse, the Internet Engineering Task Force, Wired Magazine, 3.10 (October 1995).
Jeffrey A. Jacobs, Comparing Regulatory Models -- Self-Regulation vs. Government Regulation: The Contrast Between the Regulation of Motion Pictures and Broadcasting May Have Implications for Internet Regulation, 1 J. Tech. L. & Pol'y, 4 (May 1996)
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Joanne Costello (joanne@mit.edu)
Mike Fischer (mfischer@mit.edu)
Larry Lessig (lessig@law.harvard.edu)
Jonathan Zittrain (zittrain@law.harvard.edu)

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Last modified: September 16 1998, 12:05 AM