IN THE 1960s, LSD and free love were supposed to revolutionise the world. In the 1990s it was the Internet. Taxes, petty local laws, censorship, geographical borders, even the nation state itself鈥攁ll would in time dissolve in the face of this crazy new infrastructure that was everywhere and nowhere and belonged to everyone and no one. 鈥淕overnments of the industrial world,鈥� wrote one Web activist in his 1996 Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 鈥測ou have no moral right to rule us, nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.鈥�
Well, the cyber-hippy dream is over. People are being asked to pay for Internet services that were once free. Search engines have become sneaky vehicles for gathering marketing information on users. Cyberspace is awash with intrusive advertising. And, fuelled by fears of terrorists plotting Armageddon over the Net, the nation state is striking back.
Two years ago Britain extended police telephone-tapping powers to include the Internet, and gave its law enforcers the authority to demand passwords to encrypted material. In the aftermath of 11 September, the US followed suit. Iran and Saudi Arabia, among others, routinely filter Internet content. And Chinese authorities have even attempted to firewall an entire country.
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In short, cyberspace is becoming aggressively regulated and commercialised. Governments are discovering that the Net is not some sort of ethereal parallel universe beyond their reach. It consists of data sitting in real computers in real physical locations.
Against this backdrop it is tempting to view the entrepreneurs behind HavenCo, an offshore data warehouse and Web server provider, as plucky rebel heroes keeping the flame of an independent cyberspace alive (see 鈥淥n rebel territory鈥�). And in truth, installing banks of Web servers on a wind-lashed derelict Second World War gun platform miles out at sea just to avoid government regulation is a remarkable feat.
But it would be naive and unwise to get carried away by the romance of the story. The principal goal, remember, is to make money by enabling people to store data and set up websites beyond the reach of any form of law or accountability. Only true anarchists are entitled to claim this poses no risks for the citizens of old-fashioned nation states, however badly governments and big corporations seem to be handling issues to do with privacy and encryption on the Internet.
Take the company鈥檚 threat to launch a website from which anyone can download outlawed software that disables anti-piracy systems on DVD players and discs. Cyber-activists have long grumbled about corporations鈥� heavy-handed attempts to block Internet-aided piracy of music and films, and to be fair, these attempts are often crude and appear to misunderstand how and why consumers use the Internet. But there is a long established legal and moral principle that people who invest serious amounts of money, time and creative talent developing films, music and writing are entitled to make a living from their products. This magazine would not exist without it.
In laying down the gauntlet over the DVD software, HavenCo can expect a fierce legal battle with corporate America over the self-proclaimed independence of the Sealand platform that houses the company. Cyber-activists will cheer the company on. The rest of us would do better to campaign not for a Sealand victory but for big companies everywhere to respond to its threat by adopting a more enlightened approach to Net access to music, films and other copyrighted information.
If this happens, HavenCo will deserve at least one cheer as a catalyst for change. And it could earn itself another. Misguided though cyber-anarchy is, the company鈥檚 actions throw a much-needed spotlight on something just as wrong鈥攖he draconian laws many governments are now introducing to regulate the Internet. In Britain, for instance, Internet service providers not only have to keep electronic records of all traffic and emails for many years. They have to be prepared to hand them over on request to law enforcers. With proper safeguards, that much might be tolerable, but the fact that law enforcers need no court order or warrant to access the records clearly isn鈥檛. Now, even more alarmingly, the British government wants to extend these 鈥渟nooper鈥檚 rights鈥� to common-or-garden government departments. What exactly are these extra powers for?
Governments might well be irritated by what is happening in the miniscule Principality of Sealand. Perhaps they should take its existence as a warning. There is only one thing that ever legitimises anarchy, and that is authoritarianism.