Gargi Chakrabarti

Digital EnvironmentA natural environment is all living and non-living

things that occur naturally on Earth. A Digital Environment is a created world within a computer, or a group of computers.

Digital Communication Environments (DCE) are well known as computer networks. Many Digital Communication Environments contain a central hub which everything is connected to in some form. This hub can be located inside a networking system, or could be referred to as the internet itself.

Cyberspace is the electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place

Cyber-libertarianismCyber-libertarianism refers to the belief that

individuals—acting in whatever capacity they choose (as citizens, consumers, companies, or collectives)—should be at liberty to pursue their own tastes and interests online.

The cyber-libertarian aims to minimize the scope of state coercion in solving social and economic problems and looks instead to voluntary solutions and mutual consent-based arrangements.

Social Freedom: Liberty of conscience, thought, opinion, speech, and expression in online environments.

Economic Freedom: Liberty of contract, innovation, and exchange in online environments

Vision of Cyber-libertariansCyber-libertarians have a strong aversion to the

politicization of technology issues and efforts to replace market processes with bureaucratic processes.

They defines “markets” broadly to include monetary and non-monetary transactions as well as proprietary and non-proprietary modes of production. 

They believe that the Internet has changed culture and history profoundly and is deserving of special care before governments intervene. 

Traditional Libertarian Philosophy Natural Rights Philosophy – John Loche, a

17th Century English Philosopher identified that philosophy as being “life, liberty and property” and argued that such fundamental rights could not be surrendered in the social contract.

Utilitarian Philosophy – John Stuart Mill asked for freedom of individual in opposition to unlimited state control; also develops ‘harm principle’ which says each individual has the right to act as he wants, so long as these actions do not harm others.

Traditional Libertarian Philosophy …ContdFree to Choose - is a book and a ten-

part television series on public television by economists Milton and  Friedman that advocates free market principles and says that the free market works best for all members of the society.

Robert Nozick was an American political philosopher, He provided the idea of “utopia of utopias” and he argues that a distribution of goods is just if brought about by free exchange among consenting adults and from a just starting position, even if large inequalities subsequently emerge from the process.

Cyberspace is unregulable!A basic foundation of the Cyberlibertarian

understanding of technology is that the communications protocols and online social communities of networked information technology create a new form of politics.

Internet technology blurs our understanding of place, the cyberlibertarians argue that with the disappearance of the locus of action the state no longer has the legitimacy to either command or control. This makes both traditional institutions of power and traditional political influence or protest groups obsolete.

Cyberlibertarian contention that traditional state sovereignty, based as it is upon notions with physical borders cannot function in Cyberspace.

Critics of cyber-libertariansLangdon Winner, criticises the highly individualistic

approach; suggests to take complex communitarian concerns into account when faced with personal choices and social policies about technological innovation ; also suggests that even the most seemingly inconsequential applications and uses of innovations in networked computing be scrutinized and judged in the light of what could be important moral and political consequences.

Joel Reidenberg, introduced the concept of Lex Informatica, he argues that policy-makers can resolve conflicting policy problems by understanding, recognizing and applying the theory of Lex Informatica; according to which technological capabilities and system design choices, as well as user preferences, impose overarching default rules on users of cyberspace technology.

Cyber-paternalismCyber-paternalism is the opposite of cyber-

libertarianism.  It refers to the general belief that cyber-choices should be guided by the State or an elite class according to some amorphous “general will” or “public interest.” 

Many schools of cyber paternalists are there; some are more focused on social concerns than economic ones.  Some are focused on controlling the impact of the Internet on culture or security. 

They call for state ownership of the information means of production.

They advocate a generous role for law and regulation in many online matters

Lessig’s ModelLessig observes that cyberspace is susceptible

to control by other means and the greatest threat is the control of the computer code that constitutes the environment.

Lessig (1999) writes on the relationship between technology and law, particularly in relation to digital environments.

Lessig observes that the there are four modalities of regulation: laws, norms, markets, and architecture. Each of these modalities work directly or indirectly in combinations to regulate behaviour.

Lessig’s four modalitiesLaw – regulates by sanctions imposed,Social norms – understandings or expectations

about how I ought to behave, enforced not through some centralized norm enforcer, but rather through the understandings and expectations of just about everyone within a particular community,

Market – it regulates by price and Architecture – The importance of regulation

through architecture has been previously recognised and implemented. For example speed bumps are used to regulate traffic flows or in a more ominous example: the use of low bridges to prevent buses to certain areas of cities.

Analysis of Lessig’s modelLessig’s (1999) four modalities of regulation (law,

markets, norms and architecture) act as effective regulators since they all work in a way to constrain certain actions. Law constrains through the threat of punishment, markets use pricing and price related signals to constrain, norms constrain through social sanctions such as exclusion or ostracism and architecture uses physical constraints.

These modalities of regulation may effectively explain systems of regulation both in the physical world and in Cyberspace.

Criticism of Lessig’s termsTerms such as “Law” and “Norms” are far too

over-inclusive. These two modalities of control should rather be referred to as “hierarchical control” and “community-based controls” (Murray & Scott 2001).

The remaining modalities are considered to be under-inclusive and should be re-labelled. Markets would be better entitled “competition-based control” while architecture should be referred to as “design-based” control (Murray & Scott 2001).

Libertarians vs PaternalistsCyberlibertarians argue that the design of the Internet

leads to regulatory arbitrage and makes traditional hierarchical regulation impossible, Cyber-paternalists argue to the contrary. They argue that the design is a form of hierarchical regulatory control. The underlying code of Cyberspace, the software it requires and even the protocols constituting the network act as a constitution setting out the limits of behaviour.

Instead of finding inherent freedoms in the technology the paternalist sees a multitude of regulatory possibilities. The question is never “if” regulation is possible, but only “who” regulates? The lack of state regulation leads the libertarian to erroneously think that Cyberspace is unregulated and unregulatable.

Answer to “who” question by LessigIn response to the “who” question Lessig (1999)

replies that since code is a form of regulation then the proprietors of code set regulatory standards. Software developers who control code play a central role in the regulation of the Internet.

However this is not a position of absolute power. Those developing and controlling the software are part of a wider network or regulators. This network is tentatively described by Aoki (1998), and includes a greater role for the private sector.

This private/public hybrid model of regulation is now clearly being applied to Cyberspace.

Regulatory activitiesCensorship and filtering - important difference

between the traditional censor ship and Internet based censorship is that the information in question has usually already been disseminated. Therefore the focus is not on what may be disseminated but rather how to prevent groups from accessing this information.

The main process involved in this activity is one of filtering. The term is aptly chosen since the activity involves allowing the free flow of acceptable material while preventing the harmful content from being accessed.

Levels of regulation - LocalThe local level refers to filtering activities

carried out on individual computers top prevent access to different web pages.

While this is not what we usually refer to when we discuss the activity of censorship it is none the less an important level to discuss. Installation of filtering software on a local computer is usually done in small groups.

Filtering on this level may be easily carried out with over-the-counter software products with names that leave little to the imagination as to whom it is that is being controlled.

Levels of regulation - organisationalOn the organisational level the products become

increasingly more sophisticated as can be expected of large-scale corporate users. However the products are generally the same.

The products are intended to be installed on servers and to prevent users from accessing websites. The main arguments for installing this kind of software in companies is to enhance productivity by decreasing time waste and to limit liability by preventing employee access to sensitive material. These software packages are usually combined with other forms of protective software like firewalls, spyware blockers and anti-virus systems.

Levels of regulation - national

The main level of filtering that is often associated with censorship is the activity which occurs on the national level. In a study conducted by Deibert & Villeneuve (2005) they show online censorship activities being carried out by 22 states.

They divide these censorship activities into three categories (1) comprehensive censorship, (2) distributed censorship, and (3) limited censorship. Comprehensive entails a large scale censorship activity, distributed censorship refers to a significant amount of censorship being carried out, usually the actual act of censorship is delegated to the ISP. Limited censorship refers to, as the name implies, small amounts of censorship.

State wise differencesMyanmar and Cuba limit access to Internet by

ensuring that only limited numbers of individuals can go online and even those who can may only see approved material – the rest is filtered.

China, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are more permissive when it comes to allowing individuals access to the Internet but the content they are allowed to view is heavily filtered.

USA, France and Germany traditionally not believed in censorship.

Private censorshipCensorship by ISP can take many forms but most

generally fall into one of two categories. Either the censorship is carried out as part of a governmental recommendation or requirement or the censorship is undertaken as part of the corporate policy – which may in turn be a part of industry self-regulation or simply an individual corporation policy.

One example of such as policy is the “Public Pledge of Self-Regulation & Professional Ethics for China Internet Industry” which requires ISP’s to inspect and monitor national and international sites and block access to harmful content.