Cyberstates?

This chapter argues for treating cyberspace as having statehood or quasi-statehood in the same way that physically bounded, politically governed territories are treated by themselves and by the norms of international law. Cyberspace is not contra (contrary to) David R. Koepsell’s argument, only an expressive medium, although I agree with his contention that the ontology of cyberspace—the whatness of it—has been inadequately described.3 The deterritorialized nature of cyberspace, as well as its mythologized status as some kind of “other” and imagined space rather than another “real” space, have both led to conceptions of it as a kind of “place” one can inhabit or visit, and militated against taking seriously such ideas because of its ephemeral, electronically networked nature. But that does not rule out the possibility that citizenship or membership in cyberspace(s) can be analogous to citizenship or membership in already existing political entities—states—and that such citizenship would effectively operate as does any other form of dual citizenship, subjecting the citizen to norms and regulations from different governing or regulatory entities depending on highly circumstantial factors. In other words, a kind of cosmopolitanism that extends to the virtual.4 This is not a novel idea with respect to the Internet, as some form of it has been present in discussions of jurisdiction jurisprudence since at least the 1990s.