Lex Informatica: The Formulation of Information Policy Rules through Technology

During the middle ages, itinerant merchants traveling across Europe to trade at fairs, markets, and sea ports needed common ground rules to create trust and confidence for robust international trade. The differences among local, feudal, royal, and ecclesiastical law provided a significant degree of uncertainty and difficulty for merchants. Custom and practices evolved into a distinct body of law known as the ALex Mercatoria,@ which was independent of local sovereign rules and assured commercial participants of basic fairness in their relationships. In the era of network and communications technologies, participants traveling on information infrastructures confront an unstable and uncertain environment of multiple governing laws, changing national rules, and conflicting regulations. For the information infrastructure, default ground rules are just as essential for participants in the Information Society as Lex Mercatoria was to merchants hundreds of years ago. Confusion and conflict over the rules for information flows run counter to an open, robust Information