Justice systems the world over have been itching for a way to force this whole interweb thing to fall in line for more than a decade, but they couldn't find a solid-enough target in a quickly-changing landscape. Now that things have matured, they are going after the big established players: Google for search/advertising, Facebook for social activity, Twitter for censorship/regulated speech, Amazon for commerce, Youtube for copyright. It will happen more and more and there is no way around it. The classic cyberpunk countermeasure of finding a friendly nation to hide behind just doesn't work in the long run, as Sweden has proven with the PirateBay case.
It might be an unpopular opinion here, but I believe the rise of a global network will inevitably force the rise of a global government. A higher authority is now necessary to sort out this sort of problems in a consistent way. It's the natural evolution we've seen in the past when trade and knowledge networks reached a dimension where differences in legislation made it too difficult for them to flow. The question is: how do we define this global government? Which interests will it represent in practice? I think it's something we should embrace, because otherwise we will be forced to accept it at the point of a non-metaphorical gun.
I expect at least in the medium term it will look more like a global (or at least multilateral) treaty, rather than a global government. But I agree that now is the time to think about how we could like such a thing to be structured. As much as some people would like it to be, the internet can't be the new wild west forever. It will be regulated. The hope is to have it regulated in a fair, consistent, and manageable (minimal?) manner.
As a web-based business owner, I find the prospect of having to comply with an increasing list of obscure regulations from various different entities rather overwhelming. Something comprehensive could be a relief, if it's done right. (Of course, there will still be differences between countries, but perhaps an overarching treaty could at least limit their impact.)
The regulation would be on the other end. Tor won't help you when your favorite site shuts down because they can't comply with conflicting court orders from Canada and Australia (or wherever).
Sure it will -- they could run it (at some loss of bandwidth) as a hidden service. When "my favorite site" gets court orders, they can take down their official server, and spin it up somewhere else behind a Tor hidden service.
Yeah, I know -- Hidden Services need some work. As I understand, the problem is solvable, it just needs a few more heads thinking about it to get solved.
The software response to a "crypto ban" would be wide-scale steganography, I would guess pretending to be unencrypted HTTP. Good luck banning encryption!
Variety of laws ensures diversification which protects against and limits the fallout from legal mistakes. It also allows humanity to experiment and learn faster than a single monolithic legal system would permit.
I don't much like the idea of a global government either, but in effect that is probably what we will see evolving. Consider: it is the opinion of the IMF that trading blocks are becoming more relevant than governments; facilitated by the planned substitution of SDRs for the US dollar as the world reserve currency. The problem with all this is that the tighter coupling of economies and governances makes everything more brittle, more subject to phase transitions leading to severe problems. Topping it off is too many people believing that current political and environmental problems are cyclical, rather than structural. As an example, printing more money is a temporary bandaid when there are structural problems.
Imagine you were a judge tasked with ruling on a case like this. You know the rules force you to tell Google to stop acting like it does, but you also know that your laws are supposed to stop at your borders, and in any case forcing such a global operation to comply with your ruling is almost like fighting windmills. Wouldn't that bother you? Of course it would.
If I recall, the issue of jurisdiction isn't "does any of the activity happen outside our borders" (law stopping at the border) but "does any of the activity happen inside our borders" (activity in a jurisdiction giving those courts standing).
> but you also know that your laws are supposed to stop at your borders
There's a number of jurisdictions where that is not strictly true. Including the US (US citizens are subject to US tax law regardless where they live), and a number of European countries.
It might be an unpopular opinion here, but I believe the rise of a global network will inevitably force the rise of a global government. A higher authority is now necessary to sort out this sort of problems in a consistent way. It's the natural evolution we've seen in the past when trade and knowledge networks reached a dimension where differences in legislation made it too difficult for them to flow. The question is: how do we define this global government? Which interests will it represent in practice? I think it's something we should embrace, because otherwise we will be forced to accept it at the point of a non-metaphorical gun.