I think, with 26 years of professional career in IT, and a "nerdy kid" start in the mid 80s, I can say that I am an "old man" of the Internet, and also of the BBS, and therefore I can remember a constant word, recurrent in the description of telematic networks. Indeed, since the days of the BBS.

The word was "anarchy", or "far west". All the press, television, the public vulgate, have continued to say that "on the internet there is the far west, there are no rules", or that "the internet, by its nature, is above the rules ".

Now, I would just like to say one thing. Telling a lie for a year is one thing. There is. Telling a lie for five years, ok, you're making it big but obviously you need people to believe it. And anyway.

But now I have been hearing the same bullshit for 35 years now: the BBS were out of control, Fidonet was "out of control", the Internet is a "far west". I'd say it's time to stop.

So, now let's take the "internet" apart into its infrastructure, and see if it's really virtual. What is “internet” made of?

• users. Here we are in full regulation, because as a person residing in Germany I am subject to German laws even while connected to the Internet.
• immediately after is the access network. From me to the BNG / LSR, which is located in Germany, there is a telco, a telecommunications company. In my case, a German company, a former state monopolist, 40% government owned and headquartered in Germany. 100% under German law.
• the IP Backbone, the carrier part, starts from the LSR. Which is managed by national and multinational companies, each with a headquarters, a legal person and subject to the laws of the state.
• we come to content providers, such as social networks. They too are companies, they too are legal persons, they too are subject to the law of the country where they are established.

What would be the part of "anarchy", "far west", "above the laws"?

At one time my question was answered by saying that if a website / forum / comment appeared somewhere in the world , it was too difficult for magistrates to get there in time with international letters rogatory and too difficult for the legislator to make adequate laws.

But today the vast majority of the contents are on facebook, twitter, whatsapp & co, which are all in the USA. Can you explain to me what the devil of difficulty does it offer the legislator or the magistrate to have the vast majority of the problems that come, in practice, from a single nation? Even the few non-American entities like Spotify, Xing, TikTok are listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

What the hell are you talking about? The internet is highly regulated, and is ENTIRELY under the rule of law. None of its components are excluded.

the story that anarchy, the far west or that it is "out of control" reigns on the internet is an absurd lie, which only those who see the "cloud" in the sky believe.

It is time to tell the truth: to see politicians and journalists complain that on the Internet "there is the far west is like walking into a restaurant and hearing the cooks complain that" nobody does their job in the kitchen ".

Already'.

Because it's up to the regulators to make the rules. But if the first rule worthy of the name is the GDPR, my impression is that they are "slow to move". Stuff that the windows vista firewall looks like a weasel in comparison.

Are we talking about the same people who watched as Olivetti was annihilated, or while Microsoft bought Nokia to raze it to the ground?

The Internet, as a material infrastructure that requires an immense supply chain, is completely under the rule of law and under the control of governments. The truth is another.

• the regulator is incompetent. Let's face it: the IT world has always rejected laws made by governments not because they were laws, not because we wanted to remain in anarchy, but because they were surreal laws blatantly written by incompetent bureaucrats .
• the magistrate and the police are incompetent. They seem competent by reading about them in the newspapers, but it is enough to have done (and when I lived in Italy I did) the expert in some investigation to understand who you are dealing with. (*)
• politics is slow. Between when the problem manifests itself and when the "legal solution" comes out, so much time passes that the GPDR is now a fairy tale and now only serves to profile users according to their privacy preferences. GDPR was fine in the days of the BBS, let's say in the late 90s.
• the regulator is obsolete. Faced with a problem related to the internet, instead of wondering which good practice to make successful on the market, one wonders what bad practice to ban. (in short, the web tax is proposed on the American giants instead of de-taxing and financing local competition) Since the bans are quickly circumvented, the regulations are useless.

If there is a reason why the internet appears to be a far west, that is, it is not "by its very nature", but due to the cialtronic nature of the regulator and the obvious inconsistency of a law enforcement of runaways.

On top of this is added the usual hat of incompetence of journalists, who when called to write about technology make their term as a third grade and go home.

But on one thing things are certain: the internet is regulated as much as any other human reality. If it looks otherwise, it's because

• no fair laws have been made.
• no competent laws have been made.
• no satisfactory laws have been made.
• no laws have been made applicable to reality.

and if the regulator wants to find a culprit, rather than 'the very nature of the internet', the right thing to do would be to buy a mirror.

the internet is completely subject to the law. The problem is that "the law" shits, from when it is written to when it is "applied".

This is the point.

(*) Did you know that for a judge a dictionary-based attack is impossible because the attacker cannot know that I have chosen my son's name as a password ? If it were legal to publish the records of a trial, I could have you read them in black and white. Court of Bologna. In the criminal case in question, however, the password was used … as a screen saver (no joke) by the victim, and the postal police had NOT taken the IP of the attacking computer, because according to them a printout (on paper) of the desktop was enough . The accused was sentenced literally without evidence, simply because the postal police had stated in the report that without a shadow of a doubt he was the one who had illegally accessed the system. And you want to know the latest: looking at the desktop printing you could see the icon of a well-known desktop sharing system, complete with remote control enabled. Even with a painful investigation technique the evidence against the prosecution remained, but of course, if the postal police writes (for no reason) that it could only be him… PP wins. Always. If they accuse you of telematic crimes in Italy, don't waste time defending yourselves: negotiate and emigrate. And when I asked for the trial papers to make a blog article about it, I was told that… it's not legal.