The Net and the Nation State: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Internet Governance

This collection investigates the sharpening conflict between the nation state and the internet through a multidisciplinary lens. It challenges the idea of an inherently global internet by examining its increasing territorial fragmentation and, conversely, the notion that for states online law and order is business as usual. Cyberborders based on national law are not just erected around China's online community. Cultural, political and economic forces, as reflected in national or regional norms, have also incentivised virtual borders in the West. The nation state is asserting itself. Yet, there are also signs of the receding role of the state in favour of corporations wielding influence through de-facto control over content and technology. This volume contributes to the online governance debate by joining ideas from law, politics and human geography to explore internet jurisdiction and its overlap with topics such as freedom of expression, free trade, democracy, identity and cartographic maps.

Uta Kohl is a senior lecturer in the Department of Law and Criminology at Aberystwyth University. She has written extensively on numerous aspects of internet governance, including the monograph Jurisdiction and the Internet: Regulatory Competence over Online Activity (Cambridge, 2007). She is also a co-author of Information Technology Law (with Diane Rowland and Andrew Charlesworth, 2016), now in its fifth edition, and is the co-opted Human Rights Trustee on the board of trustees of the Internet Watch Foundation.