Michael D. Birnhack & Niva Elkin-Koren, The Invisible Handshake: The Reemergence of the State in the Digital Envitonment, 8 Virginia J. of L. & T 6 (2003).
This is the sort of article that crystalizes a lot of things you maybe sorta half-knew or half-understood and puts them all together. It's about how the state was always there, even in the supposedly liberarian online environment, and how it turned to new gatekeepers and control nodes to remain dominant, taking advantage of the public/private distinction to use 'private' means to do things that would be much harder if attempted with 'public' tools.
Here is a link to the paper in case anyone wants it – http://www.vjolt.net/vol8/issue2/v8i2_a06-Birnhack-Elkin-Koren.pdf
I couldn’t find it on Lexis. The citation gave me a different article, but thankfully VJOLT had it. I should have checked there first.
I thought “Envitoment” was just a typo, but that is what her site says too. It must be some new concept I will learn about when I read the paper 🙂
Sorry to sound snooty but what looks like links to articles on Dr Elkin-Korens homepage in fact all point back to the homepage itself. Any usefullnes in this escapes me. Thank you Mr Mansfield for the link to what promises to be an interesting paper.
Here a link to the SSRN version
Sorry for not including it before …. I’m posting over a very slow link in the UK….