The role of law in the governance of the internet

Abstract

When it comes to governing the Internet, the law has powerful competitors, be it technical code, social norms or private governance. This is no coincidence, given the profound challenges to governance by law. The Internet is global, libertarian, egalitarian, evolving rapidly and largely devoid of social context. None of this is insurmountable, but the challenges call for an exercise in reinventing Internet governance by law.

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to an anonymous referee for helpful criticism and to Darrell Arnold for the linguistic trimming of the paper.

Notes

1. James Boyle ‘Foucault in cyberspace’ University of Cincinnati Law Review Vol 66, p 189, 1997.

2. For an illustration, see Kenneth Einar Himma, ‘Hacking as politically motivated digital civil disobedience: is hacktivism morally justified?’ http://ssrn.com/abstract = 799545 (2005) (last visited 4 November 2005).

3. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v Grokster, Ltd., U.S., 125 S. Ct. 2764 (2005). In the few months of its existence, the decision has triggered an avalanche of literature.

4. Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, 15 U.S.C. §§ 7701–7713 (2004).

5. Tamar Frankel ‘The common law and cyberspace’ Boston University School of Law Working Paper 01-21, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id = 292614 (last visited 4 November 2005) asks a question related to the one posed here, but treats it in an entirely different manner. She is interested in how the methodology of rule making, be it by common or statutory law, can match the challenges of the Internet. Despite its title, the following paper is even more remote: Tom W Bell ‘The common law in cyberspace’ Michigan Law Review Vol 97, p1746, 1999: the article is about regulating the telecommunications infrastructure of cyberspace.

6. For an overview, see Yochai Benkler ‘Net regulation’ Colorado Law Review Vol 71, p 331, 2000; extensively Klaus W Grewlich Governance in ‘Cyberspace’, Kluwer, The Hague, 1999.

7. More from Monroe E Price and Stefan G Verhulst ‘In search of the self: charting the course of self-regulation on the Internet in a global environment’ Cardozo Law School Public Law Working Paper 015, p 1, 2000.

8. Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, ordonnance de référé, 11/20/2000, http://www.juriscom.net/txt/jurisfr/cti/tgiparis20001120.htm (last visited 4 November 2005); see also the US mirror case Yahoo!, Inc. v La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et L'Antisemitisme, 169 F. Supp. 2d 1181 (N.D. Cal., 2001); reversed by 379 Fd. 3rd 1120 (2004); reversal vacated by 399 Fd. 3rd 1010 (2005).

9. For an analytic framework, see National Research Council Global Networks and Local Values, National Research Council, Washington, 2002, pp 190–204.

10. From the rich literature, see eg Peter P. Swire ‘Markets, self-regulation, and government enforcement in the protection of personal information in privacy and self-regulation in the information age by the U.S. Department of Commerce’ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id = 69688 (last visited 4 November 2005); Neil Weinstock Netanel ‘Cyberspace self-governance’ California Law Review Vol 88, p 395, 2000; Éric Brousseau ‘Internet regulation: does self-regulation require an institutional framework?’, http://www.brousseau.info/pdf/EBISNIERegInt0801.pdf?PHPSESSID = db35f37c9a8b4b9e55f6774e3e11620b (last visited 4 November 2005); Chris Jay Hoofnagle ‘Privacy self regulation: a decade of disappointment’ http://ssrn.com/abstract = 650804 (2005) (last visited 4 November 2005).

11. For details, see Grewlich, op cit, note 6 at pp 193–216; Jay P. Kesan and Andres A. Gallo ‘The market for private dispute resolution services—an empirical re-assessment of ICANN–UDRP performance’ Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review Vol 11, p 285, 2005 and, critically, Milton Mueller ‘ICANN and internet governance’ Info Vol 1, p 497, 1999.

12. Margaret Jane Radin and R. Polk Wagner ‘The myth of private ordering: rediscovering legal realism in cyberspace’ Chicago–Kent Law Review Vol 73, p 1317, 1998; Joel R. Reidenberg ‘Governing networks and rule-making in cyberspace’ Emory Law Journal Vol 45, p 911, at note 34, 1996.

13. For the details, see Henry H. Perritt ‘Cyberspace self-government’ Berkeley Technology Law Journal Vol 12, pp 437–438, 1997.

14. Mark A. Lemley ‘The law and economics of internet norms’ Chicago–Kent Law Review Vol 73, p 1257, 1998.

15. For an unofficial list, see Sally Hambridge ‘Netiquette guidelines’ http://www.cybernothing.org/cno/docs/rfc1855.html, 1995 (last visited 4 November 2005).

16. Lawrence Lessig Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace Basic Books, New York, 1999, pp 74–78 tells the story.

17. Most prominent are Lessig, ibid; Joel R. Reidenberg ‘Lex informatica: the formulation of information policy rules through technology’ Texas Law Review Vol 76, p 553, 1998; Paul Schiff Berman ‘Cyberspace and the state-action debate: the cultural value of applying constitutional norms to “private” regulation’ University of Colorado Law Review Vol 71, p 1263, 2000; Neil Weinstock Netanel ‘Cyberspace 2.0’ Texas Law Review Vol 79, p 447, 2000; Derek Bambauer, Ronald J Deibert, John G Palfrey Jr, Rafal Rohozinski, Nart Villeneuve and Jonathan Zittrain ‘Internet filtering in China in 2004–2005: a country study’ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id = 706681, 2005 (last visited 4 November 2005).

18. James Boyle ‘Foucault in cyberspace’ University of Cincinnati Law Review Vol 66, p 205, 1997, cf. also Lessig, op cit, note 16, at pp 6 and 13: ‘problems can be programmed away’; Berman, op cit, note 17, at p 1265.

19. Cf on the concept of subterfuges Guido Calabresi Ideals, Beliefs, Attitudes and the Law Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 1985, pp 60–61 and 63–64.

20. Reidenberg, op cit, note 17, at p 555; Berman, op cit, note 17, at p 1264; see also Boyle, op cit, note 18, at p 177.

21. Reidenberg, op cit, note 12, at note 61; Boyle, op cit, note 18, at p 177: ‘hard-wired censors’.

22. Kenneth W Dam ‘Self-help in the digital jungle’ Journal of Legal Studies Vol 28, p 393, 1998; see also Tom W Bell ‘Pornography, privacy, and digital self-help’, John Marshall Journal of Comparative and Information Law Vol 19, p 133, 2000.

23. Thrainn Eggertsson Economic Behaviour and Institutions Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990.

24. Ronald H Coase ‘The problem of social cost’ Journal of Law and Economics Vol 3, p 1, 1960.

25. More from Lessig, op cit, note 16, at pp 66–71; Reidenberg, op cit, note 12, at note 30.

26. David G Post ‘Governing cyberspace’ Wayne Law Review Vol 43, pp 168–171, 1996.

27. More at OECD/GD (96) 142.

28. For greater detail, see Christoph Engel ‘Die Grammatik des Rechts’ in Hans-Werner Rengeling (ed) Instrumente des Umweltschutzes im Wirkungsverbund Heymanns, Cologne, 2001, pp 23–34.

29. More from Christoph Engel ‘Offene Gemeinwohldefinitionen’ Rechtstheorie Vol 32, p 23, 2001.

30. For greater detail, see Christoph Engel ‘Legal responses to bounded rationality in German administration’ Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics Vol 150, p 145, 1994.

31. Insightful Gerhard Wegner ‘Economic policy from an evolutionary perspective: a new approach’ Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics Vol 153, p 485, 1997.

32. Bruno Frey and Iris Bohnet ‘The sound of silence in prisoner's dilemma and dictator games’ Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Vol 38, p 43, 1999.

33. Albert O Hirschman Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1970.

34. For background, see only Philip N Johnson-Laird Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference and Consciousness Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983.

35. W Brian Arthur ‘Competing technologies, increasing returns and lock-in by historical events’ Economic Journal Vol 99, p 116, 1989.

36. Extensively Stefan Okruch Innovation und Diffusion von Normen: Grundlagen und Elemente einer evolutorischen Theorie des Institutionenwandels Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1999.

37. Cf. Radin and Wagner, op cit, note 12, at p 1296; cf. also Lawrence Lessig and Paul Resnick ‘Zoning speech on the Internet’ Michigan Law Review Vol 98, p 425, 1999; Joel Reidenberg ‘Yahoo and democracy on the Internet’ Jurimetrics Vol 42, p 261, 2002 at note 78.

38. For background, see Michael Dertouzos What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will Change our Lives Harper Edge, San Francisco, 1997, pp 25–54; Paul A David ‘The Internet and the economics of network technology evolution’ in Christoph Engel and Kenneth H Keller (eds) Understanding the Impact of Global Networks on Local Social, Political and Cultural Values, Nomos, Baden-Baden, 2000, p 39.

39. Milton Mueller ‘ICANN and Internet governance’, Info Vol 1, p 504 f, 1999.

40. This is indeed the claim of Jack L Goldsmith ‘Regulation of the Internet’ Chicago–Kent Law Review Vol 73, p 1119, 1998.

41. Recent illustrations of the ongoing preoccupation with the problem are Patrick Joseph Borchers ‘Internet libel. The consequences of a non-rule approach to personal jurisdiction’ Northwestern University Law Review Vol 98 p 373, 2004; Paul Schiff Berman ‘Towards a cosmopolitan vision of conflict of laws. Redefining governmental interests in a global era’ University of Pennsylvania Law Review Vol 153, p 1819, 2005; Joel Reidenberg ‘Technology and Internet Jurisdiction’ University of Pennsylvania Law Review Vol 153, p 1951, 2005; H Brian Holland ‘The failure of the rule of law in cyberspace? Reorienting the normative debate on borders and territorial sovereignty’ http://ssrn.com/abstract = 777505, 2005; A Benjamin Spencer ‘Jurisdiction and the Internet: returning to traditional principles to analyze network-mediated contacts’ http://ssrn.com/abstract = 706629, 2005 (last visited 4 November 2005).

42. Reidenberg, op cit, note 12, at note 5.

43. Reidenberg, op cit, note 17, at p 586.

44. Boyle, op cit, note 18, at p 179, citing John P Barlow.

45. For background, see Daniel C Esty ‘Regulatory competition in focus’ Journal of International Economic Law Vol 3, p 215, 2000 and the articles following this introduction.

46. For detail, see Gunnar Bender ‘Bavaria vs. Felix Somm’ International Journal of Communications Law and Policy Vol 1, 1998/1; Franz C Mayer ‘Europe and the Internet’ European Journal of International Law Vol 11, pp 151–153, 2000.

47. For detail, see Bender, op cit, note 46, at pp 1–4.

48. Christoph Engel ‘Organising co-existence in cyberspace’ in Christoph Engel and Adrienne Héritier (eds) Linking political science and the law, Baden-Baden, Nomos, p 219, 2003.

49. For an illustration, see Lawrence Lessig ‘Comment on Christoph Engel: delineating the proper scope of government—a proper task for a constitutional court?’ Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics Vol 157, p 220, 2001.

50. William W Bratton International regulatory competition and coordination. Perspectives on economic regulation in Europe and the United States Clarendon, Oxford, 1996; Roberta Romano ‘State competition for corporate charters’ in John A Ferejohn and Barry Weingast (eds), The New Federalism: Can the States be Trusted? Hoover Press, Stanford, 1997, p 129.

51. Boyle, op cit, note 18, at p 178, citing John Gilmore.

52. See again Hirschman, op cit, note 33.

53. Susan P Crawford ‘Who's in charge of who i am? Identity and law online’ New York Law School Law Review, Vol 49, p 211, 2004.

54. For a basic treatment, see Kenneth W Dam and Herbert S Lin (eds) Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1996.

55. For details, see Michael A Froomkin ‘Flood control on the information ocean: living with anonymity, digital cash and distributed databases’ University of Pittsburgh Journal of Law and Communications Vol 15, pp 414–427, 1996.

56. Price and Verhulst, op cit, note 7, at p 13.

57. See Cass R Sunstein Republic.com Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001.

58. Beth Simone Noveck ‘Democracy of Groups’ http://ssrn.com/abstract = 838385 (2005).

59. Mancur Olson Logic of Collective Action Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1965.

60. More from Henry Farrell ‘Constructing the international foundations of e-commerce: the EU–US safe harbor arrangement’ International Organisation Vol 57, p 277, 2003.

61. Boyle op cit, note 18, at p 179.

62. I owe this thought to Kenneth H Keller.

63. The story is told by National Research Council, op cit, note 9, at pp 23–45.

64. Impressive Dertouzos, op cit, note 38, throughout the book.

65. Christoph Engel ‘Governing the egalitarian core of the Internet’, International Journal of Communications Law and Policy Vol 10, p 1, 2005.

66. John Cahir ‘The withering away of property: the rise of the Internet information commons’ Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol 24, p 619, 2004.

67. Lots of examples are analysed by Elinor Ostrom Governing the Commons Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990.

68. From of the fairly extensive literature on Linux, see only James E Bessen ‘Open source software: free provision of complex public goods’ http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id = 278148 (last visited 4 November 2005); R Polk Wagner ‘Information wants to be free: intellectual property and the mythologies of control’ Columbia Law Review Vol 103, p 995, 2003; Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole ‘The economics of technology sharing: open source and beyond’ Journal of Economic Perspectives Vol 19, p 99, 2005.

69. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (last visited 4 November 2005).

70. For greater detail, see Ostrom, op cit, note 67.

71. On the basic distinction between interests and ideas, see Victor Vanberg and James M. Buchanan ‘Interests and theories in constitutional choice’ Journal of Theoretical Politics Vol 1, p 49, 1989; Albert S Yee ‘The causal effects of ideas of policies’ International Organization Vol 50, p 66, 1996; an early predecessor is Hugo Sinzheimer Theorie der Gesetzgebung: Die Evolution der Idee im Recht Tjeen Willink, Haarlem, 1948, p 50.

72. Basic on tacit knowledge Robin Cowan, Paul A. David and Dominique Foray ‘The explicit economics of knowledge codification and tacitness’ Industrial and Corporate Change Vol 9, p 211, 2000.

73. For an example, see Price and Verhulst, op cit, note 7, at pp 1 and 7; Reidenberg, op cit, note 17, at p 586; Richard Posner ‘Antitrust in the new economy’ Antitrust Law Journal Vol 68, p 925, 2001.

74. Andreas S Weigend ‘On overfitting and the effective number of hidden units’ in Michael C Mozer (ed), Proceedings of the 1993 Connectionist Models Summer School, LEA, Hillsdale, 1994, p 335.

75. I owe this parallel to Kenneth Keniston.

76. More from Jeffrey J Rachlinski ‘Bottom–up versus top–down lawmaking’ in Gerd Gigerenzer and Christoph Engel (eds) Heuristics and the Law, MIT Press, Boston, 2006.

77. For a basic treatment, see Mark Granovetter ‘Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness’ American Journal of Sociology Vol 91, p 481, 1985.

78. Norman Frohlich and Joe Oppenheimer ‘Some consequences of e-mail vs. face-to-face communication in experiment’ Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization Vol 35, p 389, 1998; Jörn P W Scharlemann, Catherine C. Eckel, Alex Kacelnik and Rich K Wilson ‘The value of a smile. Game theory with a human face’ Journal of Economic Psychology Vol 22, p 617, 2001; Joseph F Brazel, Christopher P Agoglia and Richard C Hatfield ‘Electronic versus face-to-face review. The effects of alternative forms of review on auditors’ performance' Accounting Review Vol 79, p 949, 2004.

79. For greater detail, see Frey and Bohnet, op cit, note 32.

80. Thompson, op cit, note 65, at p 124.

81. I owe this insight to Robert McAdams.

82. More from Christoph Engel ‘Learning the law’ http://ssrn.com/abstract = 539982, 2004 (last visited 4 November 2005).

83. For a programmatic treatment, see Klaus W Grewlich ‘Conflict and good governance in ‘cyberspace’—multi-level and multi-actor constitutionalization’ in Christoph Engel and Kenneth H Keller (eds) Governance of Global Networks in the Light of Differing Local Values, Nomos, Baden-Baden, 2000, p 237; Viktor Mayer-Schönberger ‘The shape of governance. Analyzing the world of Internet regulation’ Virginia Journal of International Law Vol 43, p 605, 2003.

84. Cf Cass O Sunstein and Richard Pildes ‘Reinventing the regulatory state’ University of Chicago Law Review Vol 62, p 1, 1995.

85. Agreement of 2 February 1996, WIPO document CRNR/DC/94, also published online at http://www.wipo.int/documents/en/diplconf/distrib/94dc.htm (last accessed 19 April 2006).

86. More on this by Jack Goldsmith ‘Against cyberanarchy’ University of Chicago Law Review Vol 65, pp 1230–1232, 1998; moreover, a whole bunch of elder treaties applies to Internet communications as well, for details see Engel, op cit, note 24, at pp 446–447.

87. Goldsmith, op cit, note 86, at note 138.

88. Reidenberg, op cit, note 12, at note 19; David R Johnson and David G Post ‘Law and borders—the rise of law in cyberspace’ Stanford Law Review Vol 48, p 1367, 1996; Joel P Trachtman ‘Cyberspace. Modernism, jurisdiction and sovereignty’ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol 5, p 561, 1998.

89. For a comprehensive treatment, see Werner Meng Extraterritoriale Jurisdiktion im Öffentlichen Wirtschaftsrecht Springer, Berlin, 1994; Anton K Schnyder Wirtschaftskollisionsrecht Schulthess, Zürich, 1990; for a recent source, see Harry L Clark ‘Dealing with U.S. extraterritorial sanctions and foreign countermeasures’ University of Pennsylvania Journal of International and Economic Law Vol 25, p 455, 2004; Yulia A Timofeeva ‘Worldwide prescriptive jurisdiction in Internet content controversies. A comparative analysis’ Conneticut Journal of International Law Vol 20, p 199, 2005.

90. Stephan Wilske and Teresa Schiller ‘International jurisdiction in cyberspace’ Federal Communications Law Journal Vol 50, p 117, 1997; Susan W Brenner and Bert-Jaap Koops ‘Approaches to cybercrime jurisdiction’ Journal of High Technology Law Vol 4, p 1, 2004.

91. See in greater detail, Goldsmith, op cit, note 86, at pp 1202–1205.

92. Cf Goldsmith, op cit, note 86, at notes 82 and 113.

93. The point has often been made, see eg Jeffrey Abramson ‘Democracy and global communications’ in Christoph Engel and Kenneth H. Keller (eds) Governance of Global Networks in the Light of Differing Local Values, Nomos, Baden-Baden, 2000, pp 121–124.

94. United States of America v Microsoft Corporation, 346 U.S. App. D.C. 330; 253 F.3d 34, 90.

95. See again Bender, op cit, note 46.

96. For an application, see John B Spence ‘Pennsylvania and pornography’ http://ssrn.com/abstract = 669861, 2005.

97. Boyle, op cit, note 18, at p 178.

98. For the details, see Dam and Lin, op cit, note 54, at pp 167–215.

99. Lessig, op cit, note 16, at p 53.

100. On the technical side of spamming, see David Sorkin ‘Technical and legal approaches to unsolicited electronic mail’ University of San Francisco Law Review Vol 35, p 325, 2001; for an overview of current regulation, see Glenn B Manishin and Stephanie A Joyce ‘Current spam law and policy: an overview and update’ Computer and Internet Lawyer, Vol 21, p 1, 2004.

101. See Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, 15 U.S.C. §§ 7701–7713 (2004); Art. 13 European Union Directive 2002/58/EC of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector, 2002 OJ L 201/37.

102. This is the basic idea of ‘reflexive law’, see Gunther Teubner Recht als autopoietisches System Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1989; for a comprehensive view of the theoretical background, see Niklas Luhmann Ökologische Kommunikation Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen, 1986. I have further elaborated on the idea in Engel, op cit, note 65.

103. German environmental law has relied on this extensively. For the details, see Christoph Engel Planungssicherheit für Unternehmen durch Verwaltungsakt Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 1992, pp 59–78.

104. From the abundant literature, see only Albert Jan van den Berg (eds) International Arbitration and National Courts Kluwer, The Hague, 2001.

105. Reidenberg, op cit, note 17, at p 589.

106. An illustrative example is the treatment of used cars under German law. The manufacturers have negotiated a self-restraint agreement with government. It obliges them to take back used cars and to see to their environmentally friendly treatment. A government ordinance makes the termination of car tax conditional upon the presentation of a document that certifies that the user has handed in his car to the manufacturer, Verordnung über die Entsorgung von Altautos und die Anpassung straßenrechtlicher Vorschriften, of 4 July 1997, Bundesgesetzblatt 1997 I 1666. More on the background by Ludger Giesberts and Juliane Hilf Kreislaufwirtschaft Altauto Schmidt, Berlin, 1998.

107. Reidenberg, op cit, note 17, at pp 583–584.

108. Reidenberg, op cit, note 17, at p 588.

109. For the details, see Boyle, op cit, note 18, at pp 190–191.

110. For an overview, see National Research Council, op cit, note 9, at pp 135–156.

111. Gary Charness, Ernan Haruvy and Doron Sonsino ‘Social distance and reciprocity: the Internet vs. the laboratory’ http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucsbecon/dwp/wp10-01 (2001) (last visited 10 December 2005).

112. Nancy R Buchan, Rachel T A Croson and Eric J Johnson ‘Trust and reciprocity: an international experiment’ Journal of Economic Behavior and Organisation, 2006 (in press).

113. See http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/downloads/whitepapers/TPMs_Strengthen_User_and_Platform_Authenticity_113004_Final.pdf (22 November 2005).

114. Gary E Bolton, Elena Katok and Axel Ockenfels ‘How effective are electronic reputation mechanisms? An experimental investigation’ Management Science Vol 50, p 1587, 2004.

115. Sabine T Koeszegi, Rudolf Vetschera and Gregory Kersten. ‘National cultural differences in the use and perception of internet-based NSS: does high or low context matter?’ International Negotiation, Vol 9, p 79, 2004.

116. On mechanism see Mark Turner Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science Oxford University Press, New York, 2001. On its importance for implementing new law see again Engel, op cit, note 82.

117. See again Engel, op cit, note 82.

118. More from John R Anderson Learning and Memory: An Integrated Approach Wiley, New York, 2000.

119. Ibid, pp 397–412.