Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World.

• Author: Salons, Deborah J.
• Position: Book review

In Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World, (1) Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu argue that contemporary theories of globalization and Internet scholarship underestimate and misunderstand the importance of territorial government. They claim that government coercion is "the most important thing missing from most predictions of where globalization will lead, and the most significant gap in predictions about the future shape of the Internet." (2)

At the beginning of the book, Goldsmith and Wu outline three themes that emerge throughout their narrative: (1) even for the most revolutionary global communication technologies, geography and governmental coercion retain fundamental importance; (2) the Internet is splitting apart and becoming bordered; and 3(3) the geographically bordered Internet has many underappreciated values. (3)

While advocating their themes, Goldsmith and Wu expose the reader to general Interact history and case studies. In a mere 185 pages of written text, this piece is a surprisingly concise, yet complete, overview of Interact development. The style allows casual readers to easily absorb the gist of the many historical references and milestones. As entertaining as the book is, each proposition and anecdote is accompanied by numerous footnotes providing an excellent resource for the seasoned scholar.

The introduction begins with the description of Yahoo's evolving relationships with foreign government control. (4) First, the authors discuss the lawsuit brought against Yahoo by Mark Knobel in the French Courts for alleged trafficking of Nazi goods in France. The book describes Yahoo's resistance and then eventual surrender to the French demands, pulling all Nazi materials off its Web sites. The authors then go on to describe Yahoo's relationship with China, promising to inspect and monitor information on Web sites and to refuse access to Web sites that contain an adverse influence of information. "The Yahoo story encapsulates the Internet's transformation from a technology that resists territorial law to one that facilitates its enforcement." (5) The Yahoo illustration primes the reader for theoretical discussions in the greater portion of the book.

In the first part of the book, Goldsmith and Wu lay the foundation for their argument via a historical overview of the Internet. The book chronicles the "founding fathers" of the Internet and discusses the struggles between individuals, independent engineering groups...