Governments must cooperate to ensure that people have a safe and predictable environment for online exchanges.

Traditional Governance of Relations Between Private Parties

One of the functions of government has been to serve as an intermediary between private parties by legislating, adjudicating and enforcing the boundaries of their relationships. The area of law most closely associated with this governance function is that of contracts and torts.

In traditional relationships, people have usually been able to ascertain the identity of the person with whom they were dealing. They have also enjoyed tangible evidence of their own actions and those of others. (For instance, when signing a contract, both parties could see each other's signature in ink.) So, too, people have had a general sense of what system of law was providing the backdrop to their relationship. These characteristics afforded people a fair degree of certainty.

Challenges for Relations Between Private Parties in Cyberspace

The Net, however, challenges this traditional confidence. In this realm, people can no longer take for granted knowledge of each other's identity. Parties to contracts are denied the immediate comfort of signed papers, while persons harmed by unforeseen cyber events (e.g., denial of service) may find themselves at a loss for recourse. Moreover, as people around the world connect with each other virtually, they often have scant assurance as to which legal regime provides the definitive framework for their relationship.

International Cooperation to Address These Challenges

To respond to these uncertainties, governments are coming together in international, cooperative efforts to provide structure for private relations in cyberspace. Intergovernmental organizations are introducing rules that can be adopted on a worldwide basis so as to accommodate the global nature of the Net. In the area of contracting and consumer protection, these rules are crucial for enabling interaction among private parties in cyberspace.

Of course, the initiatives underway should be understood as well in terms of what they spell for Net governance: namely, the introduction of an international, institutionalized system for regulating people's relations in cyberspace.