Uta Kohl Boeken

The book explores the integration of human rights ideology into economic and commercial policy, highlighting its potential to drive legal reforms. It examines how the principles of basic human rights can be applied within the realm of commercial law, influencing business practices and corporate behavior. Through this analysis, it sheds light on the evolving relationship between public law and economic activities, emphasizing the importance of human rights in shaping modern economic frameworks.

This collection investigates the sharpening conflict between the nation state and the internet through a multidisciplinary lens. It challenges the idea of an inherently global internet by examining its increasing territorial fragmentation and, conversely, the notion that for states online law and order is business as usual. Cyberborders based on national law are not just erected around China's online community. Cultural, political and economic forces, as reflected in national or regional norms, have also incentivised virtual borders in the West. The nation state is asserting itself. Yet, there are also signs of the receding role of the state in favour of corporations wielding influence through de-facto control over content and technology. This volume contributes to the online governance debate by joining ideas from law, politics and human geography to explore internet jurisdiction and its overlap with topics such as freedom of expression, free trade, democracy, identity and cartographic maps.

Which state has and should have the right and power to regulate sites and online events? Who can apply their defamation or contract law, obscenity standards, gambling or banking regulation, pharmaceutical licensing requirements or hate speech prohibitions to any particular Internet activity? Traditionally, transnational activity has been 'shared out' between national sovereigns with the aid of location-centric rules which can be adjusted to the transnational Internet. But can these allocation rules be stretched indefinitely, and what are the costs for online actors and for states themselves of squeezing global online activity into nation-state law? Does the future of online regulation lie in global legal harmonisation or is it a cyberspace that increasingly mirrors the national borders of the offline world? This 2007 book offers some uncomfortable insights into one of the most important debates on Internet governance.