Will the Internet introduce competition between governments?

The second session of the conference was split into two stream. Stream A in the main room was Business 2.0: Creativity and the Internet Economy. As with the first session, there was an intriguing mix of viewpoints followed by a wide-ranging discussion, so the best this blog can probably do is pick out one of the most interesting threads.

And what was perhaps most interesting was the role that governments needed to play in business. The Canadian government’s Michael Binder pulled together much of the discussion with a simple question to the panellists. “The rules that you say governments will need to introduce, would that need to be a global set of rules, or do you think that each country should have its own rules?”

This is an increasingly important topic. The Internet, as people constantly point out, has no understanding of geographic or political borders. What’s online is online. There is also a growing body of people that believe governments will have to change to fit in with the new reality of a global medium and start coalescing into a global body with a single set of rules, laws and guidelines.


Fantasy2.0

This ideology is nothing new. In fact, it is Fantasy 2.0.  You can still read the original online  - A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. And you should note that it is in plain text and plain HTML code. Fantasy 2.0 will no doubt come with RSS feeds.

The concept of the Internet as being uncontrollable and extra-government no longer holds water (it was most effectively neutered by the book “Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World”). And now the hope is that the Internet will somehow force governments to have to work on Internet culture’s terms. It also won’t happen.

But a very interesting and intriguing answer was given by entrepreneur Bob Young, who runs online publishing house Lulu.com.

He said he was a fan of competition and that he would like to see governments competing in the laws they introduce. The laws that end up working most effectively with the ways in which the Internet is changing society and business will end up as market leaders. And as a result, governments that have adopted those laws will attract more business from the global world we have entered.


Monopolies and freedoms

Bob Young also provided a couple of other interesting snippets. He argued that governments’ role was to maximize freedom. Entrepreneurs dreamed and worked every day toward building a monopoly, but it was governments - not business - that made that sort of market control impossible and so provided the driving force of competition.

Another area where governments may need to create new legislation, it was suggested, was identity. What is the right level of anonymity online?

Amazon’s Paul Misener pointed out that identity was not a problem for his company because at some point someone has to buy something or sell something and that means they had to identify themselves through credit cards. But what of the anonymity of blog posts? Young drew a comparison with Speakers Corner in London: “You can say what you want there, but if you incite a riot you will be arrested.”

It is not healthy to have full transparency. Humans are not two-dimensional beings and often the most successful people in our societies are precisely those who are capable of holding different and often conflicting views and opinions at the same time.


Astro-turf

The chair, David Crane of the Toronto Star, reviewed this identity issue by mentioning that his newspaper is obliged to find out that people sending letters to the editor are confirmed as real people before the letter is posted. Without that check, a powerful outlet could easily be manipulated (and in the US there are many famous examples of “astro-turf” letters being used to create false impressions, particularly in politics).

What is the balance to be struck? Can governments really act like businesses in a global market – producing the laws that will attract the customers they want? Is this the grand social change that the Internet will ultimately cause our planet?

In his summing up, David Crane, pieced together the various aspects of this discussion. Governments do have an important public policy role, he said – "not only with laws, but also with incentives". And, yes, "one of roles of government is to be the freedom fighter".