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This is another step down the path toward a partitioned internet. Separate national networks, walled off to the point that they may not be functionally interop

• noarchy 15y ago
  As a Canadian resident, I get a sampling of a partitioned internet when I try to use sites like Hulu or Pandora. The effort to bring national borders to the Internet is well underway, and unfortunately it isn't limited to the usual slate of repressive governments. I don't wish to compare my "plight" with that of someone in China or Iran, of course. I recognize the difference.
• newbusox 15y ago
  Yes, but this has been happening for years, and in many other countries. There are instances from 10+ years ago of places like Germany and France trying to and ultimately succeeding in banning the auction of Nazi memorabilia from Yahoo and etc. because these auctions violated domestic law. The scary thing is what might happen if companies who are forced to censor their content become unwilling or actually unable to censor the content to the extent required by whatever domestic law. In that case, we wouldn't even need some sort of overarching international law to "control" the internet because the most restrictive law any given nation puts in place will be the controlling law. This has already happened in all manners of international law, where a given country, often the US, has the most restrictive law that all other countries and therefore de facto obligated to follow.