Sovereignty and the Geography of Cyberspace
Bertrand de La Chapelle, Co-Founder of Internet & Jurisdiction, recently published an article in CircleID entitled "Sovereignty and the Geography of Cyberspace" about the results and conclusions from the 7th Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held in early November 2014. De La Chapelle explores the nature of the cyberspace as a shared space, before moving on to the unfortunate overlapping patchwork of jurisdictions that create conflicts regarding privacy, freedom of expression, security or intellectual property. He concludes by calling for a move away from a strict Westphalian system approach to internet governance, and instead focus on how to collectively manage these commons.
Turning the Internet into a collection of national intranets would not only destroy the exceptional benefits it has brought so far. It would create more problems and conflicts than this move pretends to solve.
