Metcalfe’s Law was widely accepted and used to explain internet boom. It has drawn a lot of criticism in explaining Web 2.0. This paper connects Transaction Cost Theory (TCT) with Metcalfe’s Law. It not only proves that they are consistent but also makes economical sense of the Law by introducing the second critical mass in to Metcalfe’s Law. Efforts are also used to explain exiting Web effect ...

* This paper is based substantially on this author’s article ‘Electronic Commerce Law in Asia: A Case for Convergence’. 1 Samtani Anil is a Professor of Law in the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has been admitted to the Roll of Advocates and Solicitors in Singapore and to the Roll of Solicitors in England and Wales. Mr Samtani specializes in the areas of electronic commerce law...

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is responsible for the management and coordination of the internet domain name and address space, which are critical resources necessary for internet connectivity. Though international in reach since it cooperates with persons, organizations and governments in many countries, ICANN was set up as a private non-profit organization un...

The FCC’s net neutrality rules sought to limit interference by broadband service providers in markets for Internet-based content and applications. But to do so, the Commission significantly reduced the amount of innovation possible in the broadband service market. Within limits, broadband providers may offer different plans that vary the quantity of service available to customers, as well as th...

After the Chinese Tort Liability Law was enacted in 2010, many discussions focus on the liability regime of internet intermediary service providers for illegal content on the internet under the Internet Clause. An online intermediary shall bear joint civil liability with the internet user when it knew that the internet user was taking advantage of its service to commit a tortuous act on its sys...

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was created in 1998 to perform technical coordination of the Internet. ICANN also lays the foundations for governance, creating capabilities for promulgating and enforcing global regulations on Internet use. ICANN leverages the capabilities in the Internet domain name system (DNS) to implement four mechanisms of governance: authori...

The Global Online Freedom Bill of 2006 emphasizes the importance of freedom of speech on the Internet as a fundamental human right. However, the backbone of the World Wide Web, the Internet domain name system, is a poor example of protecting free speech, particularly in terms of the balance between speech and commercial trademark interests. This is apparent from the manner in which the legislat...

Many recent caching systems aim to improve hit ratios, but there is no good sense among practitioners of how much further hit ratios can be improved. In other words, should the systems community continue working on this problem? Currently, there is no principled answer to this question. Most prior work assumes that objects have the same size, but in practice object sizes often vary by several o...