International Law

The internet is filled with all sorts of content, a large majority of which is uncurated, unmoderated. This vast amount of different content may not abide by the laws in a given country, this leads to an interesting and important question that was posed by the group researching legal stuff (Julie Jung, Yuki Sando, Tony Lin, Leslie Navaro), that being: How does the internet behave under different national laws?

This has a complex answer, as it is not always consistent. Often, the laws in countries about acceptable content differ, and this can cause issues. Carlisle George and Jackie Scerri wrote in a paper about how these differences in legal definitions can cause problems for legal action against online content. They discuss how some countries are more lenient than others and when seeking prosecution, it is sometimes found that the country the content originated from views it as perfectly acceptable. (Carlisle George and Jackie Scerri's paper)

Contemporary Examples

This struggle of different national laws across the internet has been prominent in my life before, in 2019 there was a large amount of public outcry over a copyright law adopted by the EU commonly referred to as Article 13. Chris Fox writes about the different concerns related to this proposition, with the main concern being a restriction on the definition of ‘fair use’. (Chris Fox's article) Many people spoke out against this restrictive copyright law as often websites will simply comply with the most restrictive laws, rather than deal with region specific laws.

Another more recent example of this question is happening as I type this. As John Irish and Lili Bayer write, the country of France has been pressuring the EU to prosecute Elon Musk for violating their laws, despite him not being from the EU. (John Irish and Lili Bayer's article)

This is a complex question with an answer that varies. It is always occurring around us if we are there to look.