Closed Borders

Nations have taken control over the Net. They do not allow information to flow through their borders unmonitored, and without a steep price. This has caused the Internet to be reduced to a simple means of communication rather than the information superhighway it was once built up as being. What caused this transformation?

Back in the 1990's the Internet had open lines to anyone in the world. This world freedom resulted in many violations of the law in some countries, but at the same time in other countries there was not a violation of the law. Since the Net did not have a governing body, policing was left up to the individual governments. This put the governments in a tricky situation. What one government thought was illegal the other thought was legal. The fact that the governments were not able to come to a consensus, aided to the eventual restriction of international Internet access across borders.

The other aiding factor is the fear that nations had of the Internet's power. Before the closing of the borders there was a small population of cyber-elites who were disregarding government policy. They were able to avoid taxes and other government duties, because of their independence and mastery of the Internet. These elites would put all of their assets on the net in encrypted forms. Governments saw the effect of these elites on their nations growing: decreasing tax returns, much less control over their economies, and a rapidly decreasing control of trade. To combat these trends, governments stepped up efforts to ban encryption, regulate electronic commerce, and carefully limit and monitor all international communications. Tight control and heavy communications surcharges gave national governments the upper hand again.

A few underground groups fight to rest control of the Net from the governments. With the incredible proliferation of communication technologies, especially numerous inexpensive communications satellites, the system is starting to show a few cracks. But for the moment, nation states dominate the scene.

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