As digitization and packet switching revolutionize communications networks, American communications law faces a dilemma: How can it reconcile an old law that contains distinct regulatory structures for telephony, broadcasting, cable television, and satellites, and that leaves Internet Protocol...

United States law, over the past two hundred years or so, has subjected people whose race rendered them noncitizens or of dubious citizenship to a variety of rules requiring that they carry identification documents at all times. Such laws fill a gap in the policing authority of the state, by...

A remarkable amount of our personal information is in the hands of corporations such as the Experian credit bureau; strangers to us, they make their money by collecting our data, processing it and selling it to others. Other firms make decisions shaping our lives on the basis of credit ratings...

This paper examines the changing relationship between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and national governments. ICANN was born out of a self-contradictory attempt to “privatize” domain name governance; its relationship with national governments has been fraught...

This chapter will appear as part of the forthcoming INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK ON INFORMAL GOVERNANCE (Thomas Christiansen & Christine Neuhold, eds.). It examines the history of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. ICANN is an unusual beast. When it came into existence,...

Rating systems provide an impressive solution to the problem of sexually explicit speech on the Net. Members of the Internet community are rightly enthusiastic about the benefits filtering software promises. Those benefits, though, come at a cost. Sites may be stripped out of the filtered...