It's lazy policy and lazy administration and the stakes are so high. Not only are social and economic interests at stake, however. Some are suggesting the very role of government is under review. Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University professor of law and one of the world's experts on Internet regulation, argues in his new book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace , that the only effective laws of the Internet are the underlying programming codes. Politicians are powerless unless they can take control of the technology.
Commercial concerns can build technological barriers to paper laws.
A government could only wield such power if it could persuade the dot com industry to adhere to its rules, argues Lessig. Clearly, the latter is not the case in Australia, say academics Sherman Young and Mark Brogan from Edith Cowan University who last year co-wrote a paper on government Internet regulation. They found that the Government was faced with the unpalatable possibility of irrelevance when it came to the digital world. Problems with the Federal Government's current approach to Internet regulation do not lie so much in the application of old world ideas, but its unwillingness to accept an open network over which it does not exercise control. The relaxation of control is not something that comes easy.