The rule of platforms (or the abdication of sovereignty over cyberspace by states)

Kohl, Uta (2026) The rule of platforms (or the abdication of sovereignty over cyberspace by states). In, Angell, Kim and Svantesson, Dan (eds.) Rethinking Territorial Jurisdiction. Oxford University Press. (In Press)

Abstract

This chapter challenges the narrative of the so-called ‘aterritorial’ or ‘borderless’ internet and its inherent mismatch with the international territorial order. This narrative has been used to explain the disorderly state of cyberspace and its deleterious effects on societies. It implicitly absolves states from responsibility by constructing them as hapless victims of socio-technological developments for which they are ill-equipped: the territorial paradigm of international law grounded in a bygone material world cannot possibly meet the demands of the global hyper-connected online space. Contesting this narrative, this chapter argues that online activity is compatible with territorially based regulation but requires for platforms to be made responsible gatekeepers and borderguards. Yet, precisely such regulation through intermediaries - which is offline a standard governmental technique - was purposefully abandoned online. So rather than being exposed to an a priori aterritorial internet, states created its aterritoriality. What the status quo of the online infosphere shows is that territoriality - or its twin concept of sovereignty - is thin in theory and in practice. It only stipulates who can legitimately exercise public authority and when states may do so, but it has nothing to say about how states may exercise that authority. States may decide to exercise it by not exercising it or by surrendering their control over portions of that authority. This is in fact what many states did when they granted platforms sweeping immunities in the 1990s and early 2000s. That grant handed control over the network to platforms. However self-mutilating it was for states, it was an exercise of territorial sovereignty and so affirmed rather than denied its existence. It is this that explains the aterritoriality of cyberspace, not its inherent law-defying or borderless nature. It also raises the question why states would have entered into such a self-mutilating bargain, and whether it can be undone?

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Author: Uta Kohl

Download statistics