While a government may have its own domestic arrangement for protecting property rights, the Net opens the door for people in other countries to make use of this property without necessarily observing these rights. On its own that government is limited in its means to address this problem and to ensure its property system remains effective.

Property in Traditional Terms

A clear system of property rights lets people know what is owned by whom and what options people have for using that property. Such a system is said to be essential for going about daily life in a society, for example by providing predictability for conducting business or enjoying a public space.

Challenges for Property Law in Cyberspace

Likewise, a clear property system is important for cyberspace. To date most of the discussion on property has centered around intellectual property, which includes digital inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce. In theory, governments grant intellectual-property ownership and usage rights to offer incentives for creativity and innovation, while ensuring that benefits accrue to the general public. Other cases in which property questions have cropped up include whether people have rights to the personally identifiable information that relates to them, and whether a person can "own" a domain name. So, too, spam could be considered a property issue if the notion of trespass were applied to cyberspace.

International Cooperation to Address These Challenges

Governments have therefore turned to intergovernmental bodies to devise a system for recognizing and enforcing intellectual property rights in cyberspace.

Indeed, international collaboration appears the only way to protect intellectual property and maintain an incentive system for creators in the digital environment. Beyond the immediate question of balancing creator incentives and public benefit, however, there is the more systemic issue of international Net governance: that is, in relying on international agencies to craft, adjudicate and enforce these rules, countries are institutionalizing a form of global governance for the Net.