About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

54 Harv. Int'l L.J. 393 (2013)
Toward an International Law of the Internet

handle is hein.journals/hilj54 and id is 405 raw text is: VOLUME 54, NUMBER 2, SUMMER 2013 Toward an International Law of the Internet Molly Land* The members of the Commission must take into account the fact that their work concerned the future and not the past; no one could foresee what information media would be employed in a hundred years' time. - French Delegate to the Sixth Commission on Human Rights, discuss- ing the media clause of the article on freedom of expression in the draft human rights covenant on May 2, 1950, Comm'n on Human Rights, 6th Sess., 165th mtg. at 10, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/SR.165 (May 2, 1950). This Article presents the first in depth analysis of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as it applies to new technologies and uses this analysis to develop the foundation for an international law of the Internet. Although Article 19 does not guarantee a right to the Internet per se, it explicitly protects the technologies of connection and access to information, and it limits states' ability to burden content originating abroad. The principles derived from Article 19 provide an important normative reorientation on individual rights for both domestic and international Internet governance debates. Article 19's guarantee of a right to the technologies of connection also fills a critical gap in human rights law. Protecting technology allows advocates to intervene in discussions about technological design that affect, but do not themselves violate, international human rights law. Failure to attend to these choices-to weigh in, ahead of time, on the human rights implications of software code, architecture design, and technological standards-can have significant consequences for human rights that may not he easily undone after the fact. The Article also argues that technology companies are key partners in implementing Article 19. First, Article 19 directly binds these actors in some instances. Article 19's drafting history demonstrates that it does not have a state action requirement for dominant private actors. Second, as a pragmatic matter, technology companies can play an important. role in enforcing Article 19 because of their central involve- ment in technology development and standard setting. Decisions about technology can make it easier or harder for states to violate international law, and technology companies should embed human rights defaults into their technology by designing it in ways that make it harder for states to violate interna- tional human rights. * Associate Professor of Law, New York Law School. My thanks to Derek Bambauer, Paul Schiff Berman, Troy Elder, Stephen Ellmann, Doni Gewirtzmann, James Grimmelman, Dan Hunter, Paul Kahn, Margot Kaminski, Eddan Katz, Rebecca Roiphe, James Silk, and Peter Yu for invaluable feed- back. This Article benefitted greatly from the questions and comments of participants in the Yale Human Rights Workshop and the Yale Information Society Project's 15th Annual Reunion Conference as well as from presentation to the faculties at New York Law School and the University of Connecticut School of Law and Human Rights Institute. Special thanks to Karen Grushka and all of the librarians at New York Law School for unfailing support in the historical research for this article and to Patrick Boyle for outstanding research assistance.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most