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Determining Place Regulations in Cyberspace:
A clear distinction should be made between the Internet and the World Wide Web. Although these terms sometimes appear interchangeable,
the two entities are unique from each other in important ways. The Internet is a larger, international hardware network of interconnected computers.
It is the older system, a global cooperative made up of physical connections and relationships which predate the Web. In contrast, the Web is made
up of nonspatial ever-shifting navigational software including web sites, browsers, and uploaded files. The Internet is more closely tied to
physical place since it is composed of machines and their tangible connections. The Web is less directly related to geographical location since
it is made up purely of software and data. When considering place restrictions online, laws can affect either the lived spaces of hardware
or the measured spaces of software. Physically removing a computer from a library building is a separate form of place restriction, different
from filtering a list of words from a library search engine.Burning the Global Village to Roast the Pig John S. Gossett and Tami Sutcliffe (C) 2007 University of North Texas Previous - PAGE 3 - Next - The Internet as a Different Kind of Public Forum Until the end of the 20th century, legal jurisdiction in the tangible world was determined by physical location. However, the physical location of any given Web server on the Internet is irrelevant to the messages being communicated. In fact, data sent via the Internet does not technically exist in any one given place at any given time, since all data is sent via packet sequencing. This involves data being broken into pieces at the source, with pieces sent independently and out of order, arriving at the destination randomly and being re-sequenced by the receiver. The data does not stay in one place, nor can it be identified by ether its source nor its destination. Some Web observers have argued that the Internet cannot even be discussed as a typically Euclidean "space," since space in this sense means each thing is in one place, and has identifiable relations by coordinates to all other things and to the borders that define regions within the volume (Call, 1998). This decentralization of moving data is a major strength of the Internet, allowing online communication to become "immediate, anonymous, inexpensive and seemingly borderless" (Franda, 2001). However, this very trait of being free of place also creates complex and ongoing global jurisdictional Internet issues, with the difference between laws for the slower-paced, relatively public tangible world versus Web transactions creating questions of responsibility which have not yet been answered. For example, in July 2006, U.S. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert proposed a bill to limit online gambling in order to protect children. However, Antigua and Barbada have already licensed 30 online gambling firms and immediately filed a challenge against U.S. restrictions on online gambling with the World Trade Organization. The Costa Rican Association of Electronic Gambling Businesses responded to the proposed U.S. legislation: "We are not illegal, nor are we casinos. We are a technological service" (Puzzanghera, 2006). Further complicating online jurisdictional questions is the global accessibility of everything online, unintentional or not. Cultures not as open to change as many Western democracies claim to be will have different reactions to online content. Place as a philosophical model may limit perspectives internally. Monologism (ordered and predictable communication) is the basis for many social systems of communication while dialogism (unique and unpredictable communication) is the core of Internet communication, particularly of Web transactions (Holt, 2004). This dichotomy of order versus chaos adds to the richness of Internet life but also contributes to misinterpretation, censorship, and conflict over both intention and meaning online. |