The Net's envelope is the whole planet. Some governments and their regulators talk about curtaining their nations from the Net, monitoring bitstreams, and banning offensive Web sites - all essentially impossible tasks. Legal control is always local, and this is increasingly so. The federal government keeps a low profile, so much so that I defy you to name Switzerland's head of state. In many ways, the United States is similar to Switzerland.
Visitors marvel at our liquor laws whereby, state by state and city by city, regulations change.
While you may not be able to buy liquor in one town, you may in the next. Decency laws are similar in the range of views they reflect. An important part of the current political debate concerns increasing the control at local levels because, we are told, people are more civic-minded when they believe they will be held accountable and when control lies close to their doorstep. Everyone's your neighbor When US Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it included an absurd Communications Decency Act that has since been struck down by a three-judge panel in Philadelphia and is awaiting consideration by the Supreme Court. This legislation makes transmitting digital material on abortion illegal and overlaps regulations already in existence.