A Community Without Borders

By

Brian McLaughlin

Thomas Charnock

Brian Schweitzer

What is an online community?

• Community vs. Webpage

• Google, Yahoo = Tools

• IRC, IM have the potential to become communities

Online Communities

• Allows discussions of more sensitive topics

• Allows anonymity for victims

• Could be victimizers?

• Could lead to virtual borders– Protection– censorship

Borders on the Internet

• Enforcement– International

– National

– Producers/ Servers/ Users

• What is in place?– International/National

– Software

– Internal Community rules of conduct

International Enforcement

• An International Organization such as the UN would have to be established

• Standardized laws for global enforcement

• Passive enforcement of websites– Users would “police” sites– Report to the International organization sites

that violate the law

National Organizations

• More geographically localized

• Active Enforcement

• Screen outside pages for content

• Monitor internal pages for content

• More or less content would be allowed in depending on the country filtering web content

Producers Servers and Users

• Most restrictive• Could block sites not contracted with the ISP• Web communities more personalized to the user

– User would choose ISP that has the content they want• Family oriented sites

• Content unrestricted

• Commercial/Industry focused

• Academic focus

• Active and Passive enforcement

What borders are currently in place

International borders

• No physical borders on the Internet

• ICANN– Internet Society

– Domain names

– Suffixes

• White Paper– U.S. Department of

Commerce

• Business and Globalization– Maritime laws

– Space laws

National Borders

• Yahoo vs. France– Nazi memorabilia sold in France– France sues Yahoo for violating French law,

found guilty in France– Yahoo counter sues France in U.S. courts– Supreme Court in the future

Software

• Filters

• Governments and Corporations– Legal, Commercial, Terrorism

• Technology in Question

Community Rules

• Subscription Based

• Passive Enforcement

• Terms of Service

Terms of Service

• Service Provider Discretion

• Termination of Service

• Suspension of Service

• Violations– Surveys and polls

– Spamming

– Hate material

– Viruses

– Inappropriate content

Conclusions

• Best solution: International committee– Prevent national intervention that would stifle

ideas– Allow Internet to flourish, but not get out of

control– Keep ISPs from becoming too powerful