Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates and Pirate Utopias

Following on the editor’s earlier High Noon on the Electronic Frontier (1996), this new anthology focuses on issues of governance structures within online communities and their varied visions of political sovereignty. Part of the publisher’s growing “Digital Communication” series, the 25 papers appear in five sections. The first, the sovereignty of cyberspace, includes four papers that argue for various levels of Internet freedom, setting the stage for the debate that follows. Part two, crypto‐anarchy, offers seven papers, two of which focus on cryptography issues, while the others assess different forms of non‐governance within the Internet. Part three discusses how virtual reality is claiming jurisdiction from more traditional modes of commerce, and offers three papers focusing on legal issues. Part four reviews some examples of the emergence of law and governance structures in cyberspace, with five papers. The final part provides five “larger screen” utopian views of the issues raised in earlier papers, reviewing ways in which the cyberworld is pushing the “real” world into new directions and options. Many of these papers are optimistic in tone and as the editor makes clear up front, there is even an element of “fun” evident in several of the authors’ approaches.