If cyberspace is boundaryless, how can the US government shut down BlackBerry?
Following along the same line of thought, if it is right for BlackBerry to comply with (good? bad? dubious?) American law in the United States, is it wrong for Google to comply with (undoubtedly bad) Chinese law in China?
It is increasingly obvious that the rule of law does and will apply to the net and the web and digital communication generally. And law is still mostly national law. And the complications of that are still being worked out.
But the fact that the rule of law does apply is important. We still see theories of digital communication presented to us that say, in effect, if users don’t get the laws they want, they will simply pirate everything anyway, so the law must surrender to reality. But in the end that’s the claim of force, not the rule of law. The need to sort out what constitutes good law for digital communication remains.