Application-Centered Internet Analysis

Abstract:     
Much Internet scholarship tends to analyze the Internet at an inappropriate level of abstraction; focusing on the Internet as one "medium," when -- by design -- nearly all of the significant facts for certain questions are to be found at the level of the application and its associated protocols. The article suggests that application-centered thinking makes a better tool for the hard Internet questions, such as First Amendment questions (such as filtering) and questions of private ordering.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 43

Keywords: application-centered design, Internet filtering, First Amendment

JEL Classification: K3

Accepted Paper Series