Freedom In Cyberspace

Libertarian theory, which originally came from libertarian thoughts from the 16th century in Europe(Siebert et al., 1956), supposes the press should be a separate institution that belongs to the people and serves their best interests(Negrine, 2003). The government does not to intervene with the press. Citizens should have right to hear all sides of an argument in order to distinguish truth from falsehood. Milton (1868) states that any forms of control in the press inevitably resulted in a loss of an element of truth. Hence, government exists to serve the individual, and the government serves best when it regulates least in this system(Milton, 1868). However, in physical society, the freedom in the press or traditional media is impossible. Governments exercise regulations or censorship to govern the traditional media and

Lessig (1999) argues that the cyberspace should be controlled and there are four modalities of regulations with Internet activities (and non-Internet activities): (1) the law, (2) social norms, (3) the market, and (4) the architecture. On the first level, Law is one of the most evident and direct ways to regulate activities that are considered undesirable on the Internet or social media. At the second level, social norms regulate the Internet and discourage people. Third, Markets help to adjust demands. The most interesting modality is an architecture that regulates an entity by its design. The architecture includes constraints that the natural world imposes or that people construct and the architecture in cyberspace is computer code(Cenite, 2000). Lessig (1999)states that governments regulate the cyberspace by using these four modalities, of which architecture is the most significant. He also expresses that these four modalities could affect the intellectual property, privacy, and free speech and regulate specific activities in the cyberspace(Lessig,