What’s New with Wu

I moderated a panel at the American Society of Int’l Law yesterday, the key to which was no panel presentations allowed.  Just discussion and audience questions.

ASIL is a conference that tends to be about finding ways international law might be useful to the world.   Our panel — Esther Dyson, David Gross, and Michael Froomkin — seemed mainly to think that a relative lack of international regulation had been fine for internet development.  The interesting question is what happens next — my only guess so far has been a greater role for international trade.

But all this says something interesting.  If the Internet had been invented 50 years ago, there’d be an international agency tasked with its regulation or coordination, perhaps somewhat like ICAO.  That hasn’t happened (unless you count ICANN.)