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Borders Make the WWWorld Go Round


As children, we learn "what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours." From an early age, we are taught the concept of “borders.” The idea of ownership is engrained into us from an early age.

The Internet, in its infancy, is still working through these concepts to determine what ownership means in this virtual world. In September 2000, we had discussed the case between Napster and RIAA over the rights of music on the Internet. And in another article, we spoke about the reactions in Saudi Arabia as a result of the influence of the Internet.

These are just some of the cases happening around the world:

  • Two French anti-racism groups sued Yahoo! for allowing French Internet users to see Nazi-related material in Yahoo! auctions.

  • Frederick Toben, an Australian, was convicted by a German court for denying the existence of the Holocaust on his website.

  • Italian prosecutors charged several website providers, believed to be in Israel, for defaming an Italian man.

  • iCrave, a Canadian start-up, was sued by American entertainment executives for rebroadcasting American television on the Internet that was accessible to Americans.

  • Sidney Blumenthal, a White House recruit, sued Matt Dredge of "the Dredge Report," a gossip column, for publishing defamatory remarks and AOL for distributing this report to their users.

    There are many other cases addressing various countries and "border disputes" online. The questions, however, boil down to the same ones: Do countries have jurisdiction over events over the Internet? Do laws made for a "physical" world apply to the cyberspace? What are the borders? What are the boundaries?

    As discussed in the article, "A Genderless Soceity?", we carry with us our emotional baggage to the Internet. That baggage includes our need to define "borders." Our societies are based on borders. East vs. West. Old vs. Young. Lines in the dirt declaring one nation or another.

    By its nature, the Internet is without borders. It is a seamless net racing from computer to computer. Its electrons do not know what it means to discriminate one computer over another. They are all just points in a vast possiblity of others.

    What we do on the Internet can be seen around the world. We have to be conscious of the global implication. That task isn’t always so easy. It means speaking the same languages, using the same set of rules, and being willing and able to compromise in order to achieve the "bigger picture."

    As humans, we have to go through the exercise of testing the borders. Like a child pushing a parent to the extreme by crying in public, the society of the Internet needs to figure out just how far it can go before a parent steps in to make it stop.

    The copyright of the article Borders Make the WWWorld Go Round in Internet & Society is owned by Caroline Baker. Permission to republish Borders Make the WWWorld Go Round in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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