- Hardcover: 238 pages
- Publisher: OUP USA (29 Jun 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0195152662
- ISBN-13: 978-0195152661
- Product Dimensions: 24 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 618,129 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Who Controls the Internet? : Illusions of a Borderless World
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Product details |
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
Sometimes it reads with the zip of an investigative thriller....Lane's story is intriguing (Steven Poole, Guardian )
Groundbreaking and easy to read. (Nick Fraser, Prospect )
Groundbreaking and easy to read. (Nick Fraser, Prospect )
BBC Focus, Autumn 2006
'This fascinating book is a highly detailed and easily accessible guide.'
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
Marc Knobel is a French Jew who has devoted his life to fighting neo-Nazism, a fight that has taken him repeatedly to the Internet and American websites. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Marc Knobel is a French Jew who has devoted his life to fighting neo-Nazism, a fight that has taken him repeatedly to the Internet and American websites. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a competent work that challenges the oft-repeated cliché of the "Internet without borders". Written in an approachable style, it analyses a number of cases where governments, from the United States, through Europe to China and Australia, have successfully managed to control the Internet. Sometimes, as in China, this was accompanied by an unprecedented investment in IT infrastructure, demonstrating that intervention in the developing world, however problematic, does not always equal lack of innovation.
The authors give an accurate picture of various modes of intervention, and of their outcomes but if their book has a shortcoming, it is probably in its underestimation of the very real threat of government intervention in cyberspace. Although, they have successfully argued that intervention may sometimes be necessary (as in the case of eBay) they never provide the elements of a proper governance model.
Highly recommended.
The authors give an accurate picture of various modes of intervention, and of their outcomes but if their book has a shortcoming, it is probably in its underestimation of the very real threat of government intervention in cyberspace. Although, they have successfully argued that intervention may sometimes be necessary (as in the case of eBay) they never provide the elements of a proper governance model.
Highly recommended.
Format:Paperback
Goldsmith & Wu (2006) in `Who Controls the Internet', contrast the early expectations and ideology that surrounded the developments of the internet, with the reality of commercialisation and governmental control, shortly before and after the change of the millennium.
By characterising the early ideology of the internet as free, undisturbed by physical location, government intervention and law and reflects the `hacker ethics', although Goldsmith & Wu do not use the latter terminology. Throughout the different chapters, each based around an example, such as Yahoo versus local law, the authority over the Root, internet crime and copy rights, they show that the internet is over the years brought under governmental and commercial authority. "The internet is no exception" as Goldsmith & Wu (2006: 153) argue, to other information technologies that have been introduced to us like the telegraph, radio and television.
Besides illustrating their point, they also argue that there is some virtue in this development. Despite internets contribution to globalisation, most of us are still concentrated within local, language and cultural boundaries, have `different backgrounds, capacities, preferences, desires and needs' and are not interested in racism, discrimination, fraud, cybercrime and infringement of our privacy, freely possible in the early years of the internet (Goldsmith & Wu, 2006: 149). Commercial interests and customisation, and governmental law, in some cases globally imposed, show that regulation has lead to a more stable and robust internet.
The strength of Goldsmith & Wu's (2006) book lays in this argument. Nonetheless, they do not forget to discuss the opposite side of governmental regulation and control, whereby internet is used as an extension to monitor and control its population.
As with many books written about internet, reading this book towards the end of 2011, while it was first published in 2006, you might think it lost some of it relevant. In some respect it has. The technical development of Internet is not completed and new possibilities entered the scene since then, which might require adaptation and regulation. And I would encourage the authors to incorporate and extent their debate on privacy regulation with new examples such as, Google's Street View data collection and Facebook. As well as, extending the chapter on the Root, as although, the final authority is still with the U.S. Department of Commerce, ICANN supported the extension of web domain suffixes, enabling multilingual domain names and this might show some shift in power again. But despite this, the book is still a good read, well illustrated and structured and makes an interesting point that might be considered slightly conservative but realistically developed.
Goldsmith, J. & Wu, T. (2006). Who controls the Internet. Illusions of a Borderless World (2nd Ed). Oxford, Oxford University Press
By characterising the early ideology of the internet as free, undisturbed by physical location, government intervention and law and reflects the `hacker ethics', although Goldsmith & Wu do not use the latter terminology. Throughout the different chapters, each based around an example, such as Yahoo versus local law, the authority over the Root, internet crime and copy rights, they show that the internet is over the years brought under governmental and commercial authority. "The internet is no exception" as Goldsmith & Wu (2006: 153) argue, to other information technologies that have been introduced to us like the telegraph, radio and television.
Besides illustrating their point, they also argue that there is some virtue in this development. Despite internets contribution to globalisation, most of us are still concentrated within local, language and cultural boundaries, have `different backgrounds, capacities, preferences, desires and needs' and are not interested in racism, discrimination, fraud, cybercrime and infringement of our privacy, freely possible in the early years of the internet (Goldsmith & Wu, 2006: 149). Commercial interests and customisation, and governmental law, in some cases globally imposed, show that regulation has lead to a more stable and robust internet.
The strength of Goldsmith & Wu's (2006) book lays in this argument. Nonetheless, they do not forget to discuss the opposite side of governmental regulation and control, whereby internet is used as an extension to monitor and control its population.
As with many books written about internet, reading this book towards the end of 2011, while it was first published in 2006, you might think it lost some of it relevant. In some respect it has. The technical development of Internet is not completed and new possibilities entered the scene since then, which might require adaptation and regulation. And I would encourage the authors to incorporate and extent their debate on privacy regulation with new examples such as, Google's Street View data collection and Facebook. As well as, extending the chapter on the Root, as although, the final authority is still with the U.S. Department of Commerce, ICANN supported the extension of web domain suffixes, enabling multilingual domain names and this might show some shift in power again. But despite this, the book is still a good read, well illustrated and structured and makes an interesting point that might be considered slightly conservative but realistically developed.
Goldsmith, J. & Wu, T. (2006). Who controls the Internet. Illusions of a Borderless World (2nd Ed). Oxford, Oxford University Press
1 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
When i started reading this book i panicked thinking i was in a bit deep-and punching above my weight.But after switching on the reading afterburners i started to get into it.
The book illustrates that yes!-there are real people out their in cyber space with their hands on the controls of this massive network...Hooray!,i actually found it very comforting that this beast can be tamed by Government and friendly,hippy,bearded engineers.
I am very pleased that i read the whole book, and being a blogger the information in the book has given me a lot more confidence and understanding about how Google works.
The book is a good read-but,you can put it down,it can be a bit taxing on the brain cells.However when i completed it i reworded them with a beer or two,ha ha.
The book illustrates that yes!-there are real people out their in cyber space with their hands on the controls of this massive network...Hooray!,i actually found it very comforting that this beast can be tamed by Government and friendly,hippy,bearded engineers.
I am very pleased that i read the whole book, and being a blogger the information in the book has given me a lot more confidence and understanding about how Google works.
The book is a good read-but,you can put it down,it can be a bit taxing on the brain cells.However when i completed it i reworded them with a beer or two,ha ha.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > E-Commerce > E-commerce
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Law > Jurisdictions Other Than England & EU > Financial, Taxation, Commercial & Industrial > Communications
- Books > Computing & Internet > Digital Lifestyle > Online Shopping > Amazon
- Books > Computing & Internet > Web Development > E-commerce > Business Issues > Legal
- Books > Science & Nature
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Social Issues
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
