Abstract: Unique among major communications media, the Internet has delivered vast public benefit while being designed, developed, and deployed largely through private initiative and nongovernmental funding. At the same time, key public policy decisions were made early on that established the legal and regulatory foundations necessary for economic innovation and free expression to flourish. Those foundations include strong free speech protections, liability limits on Internet platforms, protections against excessive government surveillance, open technical standards, individual privacy protection, and some form of net neutrality. Those foundations were laid when the Internet was young. As part of a roundtable on "Competing Visions for Cyberspace," this essay argues that as the business, social, and technical impact of the Internet has become clearer globally, some of these principles require adjustment, but all will remain important if we are to preserve the economic potential of the Internet environment going forward.
Keywords: Internet policy, privacy, free flow of information, economic innovation, free speech, net neutrality, economics, cyberspace
The full roundtable essay is available to subscribers only. Click here for access.
More in this issue
Winter 2018 (32.4) • Essay
Introduction: Competing Visions for Cyberspace
This roundtable explores what the governance of cyberspace might look like if it were geared toward just one primary purpose, such as to advance human ...
Winter 2018 (32.4) • Essay
Ethical Dilemmas in Cyberspace
This final roundtable essay steps back to highlight three broad issues that cut across the other contributions and raise ethical concerns about our activity online. ...
Winter 2018 (32.4) • Review
Return of the Barbarians: Confronting Non-State Actors from Ancient Rome to the Present, by Jakub J. Grygiel
In this book, Jakub J. Grygiel provocatively shows how strategic actors beyond nation-states are making resurgence.