Presented at the Legal Theory Workshop, Edinburgh, 29 June 2013.

1. Complexity and Internet
Regulation
Andrés Guadamuz
Sunday, 2 June 13

2. Apologies
Sunday, 2 June 13

3. Internet regulation theories
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4. Cyber
Libertarianism
“The Internet changes
everything!”
The Internet cannot / should
not be regulated.
Cyber-optimism.
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5. Code is Law
Architecture regulates online
environments.
Norms can be built into the
architecture.
Technocracy?
Sunday, 2 June 13

6. New Cyber-
conservatism
“The Internet doesn’t change
everything with respect to how
governmental authority
regulates online environments.”
Governmental control is both
possible (and desirable).
Sunday, 2 June 13

7. Choke-points
Control the access points: ISPs,
DNS, country backbone.
Gateways, intermediaries, gate-
keepers.
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8. Anarchy in the UK
(and everywhere else)
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9. Complex networks
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10. The Internet as distributed
architecture
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11. Random v scale-free networks
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12. The Internet is
scale-free
network
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13. Some Characteristics of
scale-free networks
Self-organizing (favours fitness peaks)
Long-tails (Pareto distributions)
Resilient (but vulnerable to cascading failures)
Small world connections (six degrees of separation)
Centrality: some hubs can be more important if
they have a central role in the network.
Sunday, 2 June 13

14. Let’s look back at Internet
Regulation theories
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15. Anarchy-
Libertarianism
Resilient architectures
P2P and botnets are scale-free
networks
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16. Code
Self-organization.
Self-similar, fractal: At
practically all levels of
granularity, the Web looks the
same.
Encoded organization?
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22. Conservatism -
gatekeeping
While Internet is supposed
to be distributed, it is
increasingly centralised.
The only way to control
the Web is through central
control
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23. The centrality
menace
Consumers sleepwalking into
more central services
Resilience is replaced with
control and vulnerability
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24. Concluding...
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25. Is it over yet?
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