Vietnam is a communist nation, with laws stricter than in US11. But when one sees life in Vietnam, he senses that life is less regulated there, because the architecture of Vietnam makes it impossible to exercise much control. Vietnam has an effective ``freedom''. What power do governments have to regulate cyberspace? This depends on the architecture of cyberspace.
Sovereignty is the power to rightfully set rules. Indeed, the cyberspace has sovereignty. When one is in cyberspace, he is also in real space. People are subject to regulation of both sovereigns. How will the conflicts between competing sovereigns be resolved? In US, people are already experiencing dual sovereignty; the nation and the state, the nation is superior when there is a conflict. There are also international laws that resolve conflicts between sophisticated actors such as governments and businesses. In cyberspace, these solutions do not directly apply because ``citizens'' of cyberspace live in multiple places at the same time.
Things have happened when virtual communities and real communities conflicted. Hackers had a unique online community. They would detect security vulnerabilities and leave notes indicating the problem. The idea of people messing with systems everywhere did not play well with commerce, so government chose to vilify hacking. The hacker community was turned into outlaws. Despite the evident struggle of real space to suppress cyberspace, real space sovereigns will be losing power to cyberspace. When there are conflicts with the architecture of a cyberspace and the rules of a local jurisdiction, the users will choose the rules of cyberspace thus local governments will lose control to cyberspace. In cyberspace ordinary citizens can become international actors, but laws were not designed for this. To the extent that architectures in cyberspace affect behavior, cyberspace is sovereign.
Real-space citizens need to have control over cyberspace. People must decide the kind of freedom that will be built into the Net, otherwise market will choose it for them and there is no guarantee that the market's package includes freedom. We are coming to an age when we can say ``I'm a world citizen''. Internet has connected nations and the number of international transactions have gone up unpredictably. As citizens of our real space sovereignty we cannot ignore the sovereignty of Internet. We should make political decisions about it worldwide.
The author claims that the law will be unable to keep up with the development of cyberspace. Gradually, the regulatory power will shift from real space sovereigns to cyberspace. The protocols and transactions will converge to world-wide standards. If code is law, who are the lawmakers? What shall happen when governments exploit the new architecture to regain control? Freedom does not arise from absence of government, nor from tyranny.
To protect liberty, we should understand which values are at stake, and then we should choose which values we shall preserve.