Privatizing is now in a new form with the invention of the internet. Privatizing is when private companies and organizations have their way when government used to have the role in doing things. Dyson also says that World government ought to be a series of multi-lateral agreements and among private parties, rather than as the preserve of a central authority wherever it could be located. Power is being shifted away from the states to commercial entities. Power is also shifting to small businesses, small media, and small nongovernment organizations. This book also talks about two types of government: a Net government that controls a defined sphere of activities of people who may be located anywhere on the globe. A terrestrial government controls its citizens' bodies. Also, a net based government can operate only by consent of the governed. Any Net government must therefore provide its citizens with real benefits if it wants them to stick around. It is not limited to personal good or services, but also may include a clean transparent marketplace with defined rules and consequences, or a supervised community where children can trust the people they encounter or individuals' privacy is protected.

This book talks about three layers of jurisdiction. The first is physical space. It defines physical space as imagining the digital world as a layered system. At the bottom are the physical, terrestrial spaces where people live, each generally governed by a single nation state. With a few exceptions they do not overlap; everyone belongs in one place or another. Some people have two jurisdictions; therefore, they pay taxes in two jurisdictions. People also must obey laws where they are located. The second layer is the internet service providers, and these people are the lowest jurisdiction of the internet. An ISP provides e-mail and website access. Most ISPs are privately owned. The leading ones are CompuServe, America Online, Uunet/Worldcom, and Eunet. Some ISPs host communities and websites, among them are America Online, Compuserve, and Prodigy. Some countries offer state owned ISPs. One example is China. The third layer is domains and communities. Domains and communities are where different entities overlap and intersect. Some on line communities may have strong borders and limited to fee-paying members with passwords and other security devises, others are loose and informal. Some may be real time such as a chat group or buddy list; others may be intermittent, like newsgroups. Some may have legal standing or be linked to a group with legal standing, such as a company intranet. Some may be restricted by law. The other third layer, agencies, is not above the domains and communities. It is across them.

An Internet Service Provider decides what type of behavior is acceptable, but does not tell its individual members what to do. An example of regulation is spam (or junk mail). If someone gets a lot of spam then it is considered a common complaint. The Isp will police its customers. Also, Isps will police one another. Domain names are both the real estate and the trademarks of cyberspace; they establish virtual identity. Some examples of domain names are .uk for the United Kingdom, both .su and .ru for the former Soviet Union and Russia alone, .fr for France, .de for Germany(Deutschland), etc. There are also generic top level domain names or gTLDS. They have suffixes such as .org, .gov .com, .edu, .mil, .net. The initials stand for organization, government, commercial, educational, military, and network service provider. The domain issue has sparked a controversy. Many foreign companies do not want United States companies involved. Other parties do not want any bureaucracies involved, and would prefer to see the task handled buy small, private companies and not by a single private company that happens to be owned by a major United States military contractor. In the end, the dispute boils down to inevitable trade offs: Which is worse-a national bureaucracy, or an international bureaucracy: A commercial bureaucracy, or a not for profit bureaucracy? Which is worse-profiting off the Net, or government regulations. Spam in electronic terms is called junk mail. Spam is often harmless. If you do not want to read an e-mail message, then do not respond to it. The author thinks that spam ought to be protected under the first amendment because spam is not intended to annoy a person or have racial implications. The author also thinks that spam cannot really be reliably identified, and in principle it is not offensive. Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey has proposed a bill that would make unsolicited e-mail illegal. Frank Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska would require any sender to label unsolicited messages with a working return address and full physical address information, thus outlawing anonymity. The author then goes on to say that these laws do not make sense. They will encourage spammers to move overseas. Also, they are vague, unenforceable and even more futile than the recently overturned U.S. Communications Decency Act. Esther Dyson favors a market approach to solving the spam problem. It would be up to the sender to decide what is acceptable to charge for an e-mail message. In my opinion this is very dangerous because I then would have to charge my friends to send me e-mail and I don't want to have to do that. The people I communicate with do not send me junk mail anyways. The question I have is why would I want to charge someone to write me a letter? The author further explains a refund policy, but even so I still would not want to charge my friends to write to me. The author is convinced that sender pays e-mail will happen. But I do not think that it will because people will resent not having free e-mail. Also, private providers will not want to see their consumer base disappear, so they will try to keep e-mail free of charge. Some companies are already offering a blocking devise for spam, such as Mindspring, but it is an all or nothing and does not allow individuals to receive wanted communication. It is fair to expect people to be truthful in the information that they disclose. A company could be sued for whatever jurisdiction was specified for misstatements about conforming to the Securities and Exchange Commissions. Dyson says that the challenge is to get the word out that regulated investments are better than unregulated ones. In other words, people have to know that these agencies are available and that they should require their presence. I think that regulating investments is also a dangerous precedent because the agencies can police their own investments. I think that any consumer will invest wisely if they know their investments are being monitored by a private company versus a government agency. Therefore, government does not have to be nosy and interfere with everyone's lives let alone regulation of investments on the internet. The best consumer protection is disclosure: the fundamental value that makes everything else work. Disclosure also enables anyone to know what rules appl and whom he is dealing with.