Managing Cyberspace

The internet may appear to be a borderless space, but in reality, it’s shaped by a complex web of infrastructure, policies and competing interests. Rather than being centrally governed, the internet operates under a decentralized system: national governments enforce their own laws, private tech companies dictate platform policies and international bodies struggle to coordinate global standards. These overlapping forces affect everything from what content users can access to how their data is handled. This chapter examines the global power dynamics at play in internet governance, with particular attention to developments in the United States and explores how law, culture and ethics collide in the battle to control the digital world.