State of the Net Conference 2021

Increasingly sovereign governments are seeking to exert more control over Internet technologies. Long ago the Internet enmeshed the terrestrial globe with little respect for national borders. Now governments are trying to exert control over Internet companies at all levels of the stack. Intermediary liability laws like the European DSA are becoming more common and the Trump Administration has sought to ban certain smartphone apps in the U.S. Governments are increasingly wary of Internet infrastructure technologies manufactured in foreign countries. Social media companies are now under enormous pressure regarding their users' speech. The few existing intergovernmental agreements on Internet policy such as the USMCA's Section 230 language and the EU-US's Privacy Shield are under enormous strain. Our panel will try to make sense of the new geopolitical challenge.