If you spend enough time around tech and policy conferences, you are bound to hear a digital economy truism: the internet has no borders. Starting from the soaring rhetoric of John Perry Barlow’s “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace” through today’s reality of cloud computing and an increasingly wired globe, the idea that traditional governments have little ability to restrict the flow of data on the internet has never gone out of style.
But is this truism actually true? Does the internet really exist in a realm without jurisdictional boundaries and applicable laws?
