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Internet is largely irrelevant. For them, the choice is between access to a restricted Internet and
access to nothing at all.
Such is the situation in many authoritarian regimes that are developing national computer
networks with connections to the Internet. While in most democracies a number of individual
Internet service providers (ISPs) maintain separate links to the global Internet, in authoritarian
regimes all Internet users may effectively be members of a single national network. Even when
there are multiple ISPs within a country, international connections to the global Internet are often
channeled through a single government-controlled gateway. Indeed, the image of the Internet’s
global diffusion, in which a single transnational network makes inroads into countries around the
world, is something of an inaccurate picture. What has occurred historically is the development
of national computer networks (typically under the guidance of the state) which are then
connected to the Internet (Abbate 1999; see also Mosaic Group 1998).
Moreover, architectural constraints on the Internet at the national level can be
supplemented by additional measures of technological control implemented by individual ISPs,
Internet cafés, and online chat rooms. Each of these entities constitutes an additional “end” of the
Internet at a level more diffuse than the national gateway but still closer to the Internet’s core
than the individual user. While governments may have less direct control over the technological
configuration of Internet access at these levels, they can leverage their control of law and their
influence over markets and norms in ways that will encourage private entities to establish their
own architectural constraints on Internet use.
Convention