GVPT333: Group Community
Kimberly Carter, Dave Dobin, Tim Hammond, Chris Rushing

Law and Borderless Community

The borderless nature of the Internet community threatens existing notions of jurisdiction law and social norms. The Internet is the newest form of communication and the only one that can truly be classified as a "many-to-many" medium. This "many-to-many" structure has the ability to foster virtual communities and human interaction without respect to physical boundaries. Online communities interact without necessarily knowing the locations of other individuals or where the server disseminating the information resides. Laws regarding other forms of human interaction such as commerce and print media generally rely on geographical locations and physical boundaries as clues to acceptable behavior. The Internet presents a much more problematic challenge because, "the Net radically subverts a system of rule making based on borders between physical spaces, at least with respect to the claim that cyberspace should naturally be governed by territorially defined rules."

Physical and legal boundaries that exist in real life, such as townships, are easier to police than cyberspace. Local law enforcement officials and elected lawmakers have a physical presence and clearly defined jurisdictions. On the Internet, no such physical or legal jurisdictions exist. The lack of borders and jurisdictions, coupled with the ease at which anonymity can be achieved, allow Internet denizens to wander throughout online communities and traverse the world without leaving their physical locations or being subjected to the laws that govern the state where the web site is viewed. Whereas members of real life communities often censor themselves or conform to social norms to avoid ostracism or harm, Internet users currently have no overwhelming burden to worry about physical or legal harm in most cases.