May 17, 2012

My New Paper, Just in Time for IPO: Facebookistan

Most of Facebook's users lie outside the United States, its home jurisdiction. In a new paper published this week, I examine how Facebook has been regulated across the world. Download here.  

Here is the abstract:

Who rules Facebookistan? Who makes the rules that govern the way a tenth of humanity connects on the Internet? The United States, France, China, or Mark Zuckerberg? Facebook represents a type of multinational corporation new to the world stage—one that raises issues different than those raised by earlier generations of multinational corporations. A review of international controversies involving Facebook reveals that Facebook has changed some of its policies as a result of pressures from governments around the world, while resisting other pressures. At the same time, Facebook has itself helped spur changes in the law, most evidently in helping undermine repressive governments. Ultimately, this Article finds that regulatory power is, de facto, dispersed across a wide array of international actors.

 

Posted by Anupam Chander on May 17, 2012 at 07:04 AM in Digitization | Permalink