The First Amendment as Killer App

Why did the United States come to lead the world in cyberspace? Just as nineteenth century American judges altered the common law in order to subsidize industrial development, American judges and legislators altered the law at the turn of the millennium to promote the development of Internet enterprise. Europe and Asia, by contrast, imposed strict intermediary liability regimes, inflexible intellectual property rules, and severe privacy constraints, impeding local Internet entrepreneurs. The American solicitude for Internet innovations was grounded in our commitment to free speech. 

Free speech has proven to be the industrial policy for the Information Age.

 

Anupam Chander is Director of the California International Law Center; Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis; and the author of The Electronic Silk Road (Yale University Press).