Wednesday May 06, 2009
Could we shut the net down?
Michael Brooks
New Scientist
Almost certainly not. Much of the infrastructure - the servers, cabling and satellites, and the internet service providers (ISPs) that run them - is in private hands. A government might be able to mandate that ISPs in their territory be shut down, but people could still receive data through satellite links controlled by companies not answerable to that government.
To extend that shutdown across national borders is barely conceivable. "One very powerful government could have strong effects on their own country, but it would be very difficult to do on a worldwide basis," says Milton Mueller of the international Internet Governance Project.
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