Part of the premise of the accountable net is that each individual will be setting up his/her own set of rules for who they connect to (this is a who rather than a what question -- trustworthy sources of bits).  We're still working on the paper, so there's nothing to blog yet, but the roadshow has been quite constructive. 

At the Berkman Center last week, we heard from several people who are concerned about making any changes at the ISP level.  The worry is that packets won't be guaranteed to get anywhere unless they find a route through congenial ISPs.  If any ISP can block anything, the reasoning goes, we'll end up with a net that doesn't actually interconnect.  No quality of service guarantees.

The response to this is that ISPs, to be valuable, will want to connect to networks that make adequate security guarantees (and enforce them).  So interconnection will be desirable and growing.  Backbones will want to make the same deals.

It's at the individual level that things get most interesting.  Let's assume that we flip the default setting and connect only to those we actually trust (or who are recommended to us).  In a sense, we will have set up an individual set of "laws" for online interactions.  We could even draw a picture of these laws so that we'd understand them for ourselves in a continuously updated way.  If we're not up to doing this for ourselves, we could go to vendors of rules and get the package that made sense.

Now, if laws can be bought and sold in this fashion, what does that mean for our respect for and understanding of "real" law?  If "real" law only governs atoms, is it more or less meaningful to us?  It may be that we end up with two complementary systems, with overlaps.  After all, the sovereign who has power over us, physically, could try to mandate particular sets of default rules -- a tricky task to enforce.  Things will be moving too quickly for the sovereign to keep up with our filters and connections.

But a new question does arise -- what happens to respect for "real" law when another system of rules exists that has legal effect in the online world?