Is The US Controlling The Legal Direction Of The Internet?

from the going-that-way dept

There have been plenty of articles about the question of "jurisdiction in cyberspace". Since anything online can appear in any country, the question is always which country's laws apply? While some suggest that it's a simple matter of making it be the country where the server resides, that's not what's happening in practice. It appears that, increasingly, the laws of the US are the laws of the internet, even though that upsets plenty of people in other countries. The article mentions that ISPs in countries outside the US regularly receive DMCA "takedown" requests, even though they're not subject to that law. Many are still afraid that US courts will then require that the sites get shut down - even if they don't violate any laws in the country of origin. The writer of the article suggests that countries need to either accept the US's dominance in online law making, adopting a "national walled garden" approach like Saudi Arabia or China, or choose the most difficult option and try to create systems that respect national differences in the law, while coming up with a method for "global consensus" in areas where the laws disagree.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 9 Jun 2003 @ 6:11pm

    Global Court, anyone?

    Hmm, a global law, like for the internet. Wasn't there a plan to build a global court for figuring out these problems? That's odd, I wonder what happened to it.

    Oh yeah. The US vetoed the idea and, as one of the founding 5 nations, the US veto caused the idea to fail. That's odd. I wonder why the US would veto a world court. the last thing it vetoed was only something about prosecuting some country about war crimes from 1991, but I guess that would have been another job for the World Court.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Jeniffer, 10 Mar 2006 @ 4:28am

      mohigan sun casino

      A great site where one can enjoy the thought of a great mind long departed. Cheers for the good work!

      link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.