This evening Paul Bernal from UEA will present a talk to NewPolCom entitled, Why do governments always get internet regulation wrong? Because they don't embrace the mess...

Time: Tuesday 30th April 5pm

Place: Queens 170

Please find details here of Paul’s talk:

Why do governments always get internet regulation wrong? Because they don’t embrace the mess…

Dr Paul Bernal–Research Group: Media, Information Technology and Intellectual Property Law, University of East Anglia.

The clamour for governments to ‘regulate' the internet has never been greater. They’re worried about offensive speech, about trolling and cyber-bullying, about fake news and political manipulation, about piracy and other forms of copyright breach. The internet, according to some of these accounts, is a dangerous place, a ‘wild west’ that needs to be reined in and controlled. And yet their efforts are largely ineffective - or worse, are actually counterproductive. Plans to address trolling end up creating tools for trolls to use on their victims. Attempts to deal with ‘fake news’ end up making fake news more effective and pushed nearer to the top of search lists. More criminal offences and stronger enforcement make almost no inroads in trolling. The question is why this happens - and the answer, across the board, is a failure to face up to the complexity, the messiness of the internet, but instead to fall into a series of classical traps based on oversimplified views of how the internet works. In this talk, Paul Bernal will explain why and how this happens - and what can be done to improve the situation.