This Harvard Law Review delves into the foundational principle of contemporary debates about Internet regulation and its definition as a sovereign state. One section focuses on how the realist concept of sovereignty, while used by national actors such as China to regulate the internet for its citizens, fails to create a generalized basis for Internet regulation since there are activities that could fall outside of a nation’s jurisdiction. Essentially, territorial regulation can only go so far to limit what the internet can do, but the internet cannot solely be defined as its own self-governing territory while several government actors are capable of shaping parts of the Internet to their liking.
