NEGATIVE – COUNTERPLAN – FREE MARKET 77

FREE MARKET SELF-REGULATION IS THE BEST POLICY SYSTEM FOR INFORMATION

BOTTOM-UP SELF-REGULATION WILL NOT BE PERFECT, BUT WILL BE BEST

The goals of systems of self-regulation will evolve and change over time, and will vary widely across the e-commerce marketplace. Entrepreneurs will make informed guesses about privacy policies to allay their customer's fears (if any) of doing business online. Some entrepreneurs will get it wrong, and lose ground; others will get it right, succeed, and be imitated by late-comers. But entrepreneurs must be permitted to take their cues from the results of engaging in the marketplace, not from top-down commands.

FREE MARKET KEY TO RECOGNIZING LIBERAL GOALS

Neil Weinstock Netanel, Arnold, White & Durkee Centennial Professor of Law, University of Texas School of Law, March 2000; California Law Review, "Cyberspace Self-Governance: A Skeptical View from Liberal Democratic Theory," EE2001-hxm lxnx

What I call the "cyberanarchist" claim anchors cyberspace self-governance in the spontaneous order arising from freedom of exit, rather than in community norm generation. Cyberanarchists place singular emphasis on each individual's "real freedom of movement" among diverse "rule spaces," rather than on the consensual, discursive formation of social norms by members of a close-knit community. n24 It does not matter whether  [*405]  online discussion groups or even entire networks of such groups are internally autocratic, since individuals can always choose "their own more congenial online homes." n25 Cyberanarchists, then, see cyberspace as a market of alternative rule regimes. It is the ease of exit and the abundance of alternatives - in essence consumer choice in conditions approaching perfect competition--that bring to fruition the liberal ideals of liberty and consent.