The Space Between

Trespassing and Other Violations

While Keen’s conclusions about the state of culture are dependent on age-old, subjective definitions of “art” and “culture,” hypertext’s fallout has in some ways driven a wedge between different groups of people. Whereas on a theoretical level, readers and writers have been brought closer together by hypertext, on a practical level economics have still produced a hierarchy that divides technological haves from the have-notes: those with computers are divided from those without them; those with broadband conflict with dial-up users; successful Web developers dominate those who can’t afford premium advertising and design. It is the kind of digital divide Keen predicts as the result of a “democratic” Web.

In this relationship, the roles are changed. We are no longer talking about authors and readers; we refer to consumers and producers. And while traditional thinking may hold that demand drives producers, thanks to context-driven advertising consumers are now at the whim of the Web’s major advertisers—a situation that Eric J. Sinrod says parallels legal issues in the physical world.

Sinrod writes that digital intrusions are closely analogous to trespassing to chattels, the violation or taking of a person’s property. The most glaring example is, of course, unsolicited e-mail (spam). These uninvited messages arrive in the inboxes of Internet users around the world at an astonishing rate. A study conducted in late 2005 by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group determined that 80 percent of e-mail sent in the world is unsolicited. Along with spam, the trespassing analogy has also been applied in court cases to unwanted cell phone text messages and even to the distribution of spyware, software that maliciously opens the user’s computer to security risks.

The idea behind the trespassing argument, Sinrod says, is that the Web is a network of private stores or sites, a view supported by some courts. The common belief is that the actual server machines on which those sites are stored are private property. The owners allow “visitors” to partially access to their property, the public Web site—a gateway often abused by human and robotic burglars. Other courts, though, have adopted an even more physical view. If a “visitor” does not cause real damage to the victim’s computer equipment, there was no trespass or burglary.

The important thing here is not to focus so much on the legal issues and the economic issues but to see how ingrained spatial thinking has become in the digital world. Not only is it present in the names we have given to hypertext’s most basic features but it is also present in the way we think about cyberspace.