Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

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c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
construction, Wolton claims the definition of what should comprise such freedom
of communication. The problem reinforces the confrontation between universalist
definitions and those culturally localized; between the liberal ideal of the unrestricted
right of expression and the politic self-determination of the nations, which
can construct government solutions deemed authoritarian, conservative and even
totalitarian to the liberal eyes.
Another complication factor is that if, on the one hand, communication in
distributed networks — without national regulation — enables certain forces of the
market to perform only in favor of their interests, on the other hand, certain Internet
legislations can also concentrate interests thereof, or of other market forces. The
distributed communication, as it spread throughout the planet, for instance, clearly
bothers the media groups controlled by Rubert Murdoch 1 , the North-American
phonographic and cinematographic industries and the corporations that make the
property of immaterial assets as their sources of profit. Therefore, they fight for national
laws that enforce their corporate objectives in legal mechanisms consolidating
their business models.
No man’s land?
Common sense and the traditional press diffused, for long, the idea that the
Internet would be an anarchic and uncontrolled communication network, with no
law, in which anonymity would enable criminals of all kinds to perform without
being punished. Posteriorly, this idea had an inflection and started to cultivate the
proposition that the national laws have all possibilities of being applied in the network,
provided that the integrants are identified and located within the national
boundaries. The following excerpt illustrates well the change in the treatment given
to communication in distributed digital networks:
“Once upon a time, there was an anarchic network called the Internet, which
was known as “No Man’s Land.” It remains anarchic, but it is increasingly protected
by laws. A determination by attorney Renato Opice Blum, expert in In-
1. See the Hamburg Declaration, initiative of Rupert Murdoch to impose in network communication
a harder standard of respect to intellectual property: http://ur1.ca/0jmmc.
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