The W.o.D, Prostitution
The W.o.D, Similarities of Illegal Organisations
The W.o.D Moral Panic II
In addition, there are concerns about the secret gathering of criminal intelligence, undisclosed hearings and the operations of “public safety orders” and the creation of offences for associating in public (Ayling, 2011, Katz, 2011, Morgan et al., 2010). The perception of most OMCGs is that they are deviant groups engaging in non-conformist behaviour (Barker, 2005).
Senior Police have added to the perception of the bikie menace by statements suggesting that OMCGs “…play a major part in organised crime activities” as stated by the head of the Taskforce Maxima, the Queensland anti-bikie taskforce, Superintendent Mick Niland (Keen, 2016).
While it is claimed that the laws introduced do not target specific groups, the Queensland Taskforce that reviewed the laws censured the blind amplification of “the role of any particular organised crime group” finding a focus on ‘criminal gangs’ and on OMCGs (Taskforce on Organised Crime Legislation, 2016, p. 89).
As such, it is important to consider the justifications given for introducing these clearly targeted measures and if the response to the perceived problem is indeed proportionate (or otherwise) in Queensland’s experience.
This makes DDMs significant not as “crime arenas” but as alternative governance systems emerging in response to prohibition’s harms. No scholarly field has yet framed this as structural resistance to state harm — this is the conceptual gap this thesis fills.
When John Perry Barlow published his Declaration of the Independence of Cyber space in 1996, he captured the spirit of libertarian innovation that—then and now— characterises a stream of idealised political thought prominent in Silicon Valley.
Innovations in information communications technologies, such as the internet, social media, mobile phones, and AI, have often been attributed to “permissionless innovation”, with companies largely left to determine their own trajectories, priori ties, and markets, amid limited government intervention (Thierer, 2014).
Barlow captured the ideals of a limited state, with constrained relevance and reach, when he argued “your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us…
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” which were “neither solicited nor received” by the cybercommunity Barlow referred to.
Over the decades, there have been efforts to extend this libertarian spirit beyond cyberspace into the physical world,1 most notably PayPal founder Peter Thiel’s efforts to establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities beyond existing government systems. The construction of these
new “societies” would, in the Ory, enable people to choose novel political and social systems with significant autonomy, escaping the constraints imposed by traditional nation‑states (Quirk and Friedman, 2017).
In this vein, initiatives such as the Sea steading Institute, established by Theil and Patri Friedman—grandson of libertarian economist Milton Friedman—have attempted to provide a physical space for technology and innovation beyond the reach of government.
For the most part, however, the experiment has failed to overcome the technical and logistical challenges of building self‑sustaining, habitable structures on the ocean. Moreover, the legal and political obstacles these new platforms sought to evade have proved difficult to navigate, with questions of jurisdiction, national sovereignty, and maritime law all thwarting progress and adoption.
More recently, this imagery of islands free from government interference, where technological innovation can flourish, has been challenged by growing concerns that regulatory failure has enabled the destructive side of the internet and social media (such as online hate speech and mis/disinformation), as well as fears regarding the present and future of AI.
Even so, despite being created by elites, for elites, based on a very particular US cultural experience, experiments such as the Sea steading Institute do raise pertinent questions about technology, innovation, and governance in areas where the state has limited reach.
Spaces of limited or non‑state governance are often characterised as underdeveloped and lacking innovation, precisely due to the absence of the state. Yet the actual governance generated in these spaces imposes its own logic of regulation on populations, leading to technological innovation being integrated to much of the same extent as under state apparatuses.
To date, the impact of non‑state governance on technology and innovation has not been sufficiently explored in the technology and development literature.
Instead, these ‘grey areas’ are either excluded from the scope of analysis as they are considered too volatile or conflict‑prone to harbour the necessary conditions for innovation (Farran, 2006; Krasner, 2016, 86) or treated—for the same reasons—purely as sites to be targeted for intervention and development.
In reflecting on the concepts and literature concerning law and governance in areas where the state has limited reach, we draw on a broad range of regulatory customs outside the authority of the traditional Weberian state (Price and Stremlau, 2018).
As might be expected, some ideas are more relevant to certain empirical cases and local contexts than others.
While such questions may have thus far confounded innovators in Silicon Valley, they are in fact currently being navigated in regions that receive far less visibility.
This book looks to these areas, which are often subject to limited state governance and law, with a view to broadening mainstream understandings of technology law and policy.
Beyond this, such cases, analysed as part of a broad comparative framework, can offer insights into the (in)consistencies surrounding internet— perhaps even AI—governance, and the patterns enabling local tech ecosystems.
It also provides an alternative perspective with which to reflect on the libertarian ideals propounded by US and Western‑based techno‑utopians. Somalia, for example, is often described as a place of ‘anarchy’ where the rule of law is largely absent—the world’s most ‘failed state’.
Despite this, the country has experienced tremendous innovation: its internet connectivity is among the fastest and least expensive on the continent, and it has one of the world’s most ambitious mobile money systems, rendering the economy almost cashless.
The laws, rules, and norms that have enabled this growth—including xeer (customary law), sharia law, state law, and the rules and norms of businesses themselves—are particular to Somalia (Stremlau, 2018).
Nevertheless, comparable patterns and logics can be seen in Afghanistan’s vibrant telecoms industry, or in areas of the Middle East governed by non‑state actors such as ISIS.
These areas of limited governance and law can also be found within states. In Brazil’s favelas (slums or ghettos), for example, informal infrastructures, networks, and technologies compete with both the state and major corporations to deliver and control internet access.
More genre ally, border areas often play host to competing governing entities, which may vie for control over the physical infrastructure of ICTs (such as mobile telephony) or attempt to regulate access to technologies.
In exploring how new communications technologies adapt, innovate, and are governed in areas where the state has limited reach, we bring together literature and phenomena that to date have seldom been in dialogue with mainstream state‑ centric perspectives or, indeed, each other.
Public Spread Fear
Much of the existing literature on law and technology focuses on self-‑ or state regulation, predominantly in North America, Europe, or, when examining more authoritarian practices, Russia and China.
Casting our gaze beyond these narrow conceptual and geographical con fines, we alight on regions and communities that often go overlooked, not least because they are regarded as peripheral to the business interests of big tech.
Yet there is tremendous innovation, experimentation, and new modes of governance emerging in these areas. In seeking to understand the patterns and logic of what may be referred to as the “rule of (non)law”, and how this enables technological assemblages and uses, the following chapters cast new light on the potential and practice of regulating new technologies.
In his Declaration, Barlow argues you claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don’t exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means….
This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different. In many ways, these words echo the critique of efforts by rich, mostly Western, governments to promote law and development initiatives in areas where governments are weak or have limited reach.
The rest of the book proceeds as follows: First, section one focuses on areas gov earned by what might broadly be considered customary law, exploring how technology interacts with longstanding norms or traditions of governance.
Next, section two looks at border regions, both between states and between communities, to explore how legal pluralism and diverse—often overlapping or competing—modes of non‑state governance shape the adoption or adaptation of new technologies.
Section three then explores cases where non‑state authorities are using technology to help them perform state‑like functions, often in opposition to or in competition with the state.
Finally, section four addresses some of the key concepts and issues raised during debates about the regulation of cyberspace—including the libertarian perspectives championed by some in Silicon Valley—and explores what non‑state governance might mean for the legal geographies of the digital world.
A Spectrum of Approaches to Law and Governance In this chapter, we seek to provide a grounding for the diverse empirical cases presented in this book.
