The Theory Of Information Sovereignty

Information technology revolution represented by the Internet and acceleration of globalization tide promote human to enter a new historical stage, namely the information age. The information age that breaks through the limitation of national geographical boundary on print media is the era of rapid and convenient circulation of global information, as well as an age of information explosion. Information has become a component and resource form in a modern society, which cannot be ignored and separated. However, information security of citizens and states has been threaten with the events, such as information leakage, the theft of information and information war, etc. and these events emerge in endlessly. Such series of domestic information accidents and conflicts among countries in the world community indicate that maintaining information security and privacy become new urgent and tough problems around the world. Citizens have two roles of the information releaser and receiver, which intensify the arbitrary, complicated and transnational trend of international information flow. How to protect citizens' freedom to release and receive information, at the same time, maintaining the domestic information flowing orderly and keeping their own information interests in the international community, are the keys to solving the domestic information accidents and conflicts among countries in the international community. Compared with completing the information network foundation and solving the specific technical problems such as protection ability of information system safety, more important thing is to explain some basic theoretical problems, for example, why countries can take series of measures to protect the rights of citizens' information, maintain their information space order and defend national interests. The content of state power and the exercise of power boundary are the basic theoretical problems. To be specific, is the traditional sovereignty theory applicable to emerging information problems? May the coverage of sovereignty extend from geographical boundary of one country to the information space?(Chapter 1); If information sovereignty exists, how does the country establish its internal structure? Does it need to limit it through legal approach?(Chapter 2); How do the various countries protect citizens' information rights, maintain the information space of its own country and protect the states' information interests through the legal way in the world?(Chapter 3 and 4)Introductory part puts forward practical and theoretical significance of researching on information sovereignty from the two aspects problems(reality demand) and meaning(theoretical question). No matter at domestic or internationally, tension exists between the free flow of information and information control. In the face of the rise of high tech information technology, the position and proposition of states and citizens are not completely consistent. Citizens propose that information flows freely, while countries tend to control, manage, and share the information. Different propositions of countries and citizens are prominent in the information space. How to reconcile the tension between the information control and the free flow of information has become the realistic requirement of proposing information sovereignty theory. Information has become the powerful impetus of economic, political, cultural, military, and social development. Therefore, the information development, control and utilization become an important index to weigh a country's political power, economic power, cultural strength and military power. Information space turned into the new battlefield of the national competitions correspondingly. The progress of information technology impacts national ability to control the information flow. Whether it causes the change of the traditional sovereignty theory constitutes a theoretical research on information sovereignty problem.On the premise of separation between sovereignty and nation, the body text is divided into four chapters. From two aspects of ought to be and to be, it illustrates the nature and legal restrictions on information sovereignty issues.The first chapter explores new changes of sovereignty theory in the information age. As an important and rather blurry legal concept, the diachronism of information sovereignty makes it into the theoretical troubles of the legal definition. Through summarizing the rheological history of sovereignty theory, sovereignty theory is associated with social practice, which reflects the features of sovereign in different historical periods. In the information space, information flow is not arbitrary without rules, and information spreads outside national borders orderly in the existed political structure. Although the progress of information technology brought challenge for the state to control and manage information flow, it also acts as the technological basis of information sovereignty theory. As a result, the coverage of sovereignty extends from land, sea, air space and the range of subsoil extends to the information space, and information sovereignty has been in existence and grown into reconciling the tension between the free information flow and information control and management. Information sovereignty is the sovereignty about information and built on the sovereignty theory. The legal definition provides theoretical basis for maintaining information security, which facilitates to clarify the roles of nations, the non-state actors and individuals in information space.The second chapter investigates the internal structure of information sovereignty power. It aims to restraining the information sovereignty, preventing it from information sovereignty to information hegemony and realizing the effective constraints on information sovereignty power. Internal power structure of information sovereignty is needed to research on. Information sovereignty contains hard information sovereignty(information control right and management right) and soft information sovereignty(information resource sharing right). Different combinations among three kinds of power constitute the special circumanstances of information sovereignty power structure of different countries. Through planar and hierarchical transformation of information control right, management right and resource sharing right, two typical modes of information sovereignty power structure are centralized structure and restricted structure. In the face of the rapid development of information technology, the state control, management and sharing of information have been challenged by information technology. In the natural level, the free information flow exists in a certain scope and flows in a certain order. In order to solve the contradiction between the free flow of information and information management, it requires that information sovereignty exists and legal restrictions on information sovereignty are needed at the same time. Power restricted structure of information sovereignty is the power structure in the rule of law, which is the bridge between political reality of information sovereignty and moral pursuit of information sovereignty.The third chapter investigates the domestic legislative status quo to limit information sovereignty, summarizing the relatively strict restricted pattern represented by Germany, South Korea and China, and the relatively loose restricted pattern represented by the United States, Britain and France. Both relatively strict restricted pattern and relatively loose restricted pattern contain liberty value and order value. Legal restrictions on information sovereignty are guided by benign interaction between liberty and order, and realize the balance between the free information flow and information control and management. Legal restricted on internal information sovereignty is the necessary requirement to realize power restriction structure of information sovereignty, behavior rules of protecting the citizens' information rights and regularity demonds of responding the development of information technology. As a result, the paths of legal restrictions on information sovereignty include distinguishing the harmful information and illegal information, applying technical instrument to make up the deficiency of legal means and sticking to the norms that legal rules respond information technology development.The fourth chapter examines external national information laws and policies, including unilateral actions, bilateral actions and multilateral agreements in the global information space. Unilateral actions manifest that a nation promotes information hegemony in nature, while information hegemony is the variation of information sovereignty under power centralized structure mode. Legal restrictions on external information sovereignty are to prevent the formation and promotion of information hegemony and maintain order and security in the global information space. International paths of legal restrictions on information sovereignty include guaranteeing the realization of external information sovereignty, keeping order in global information space by law and putting forward to the development direction of normalizing information resources sharing right by law.The conclusion focuses on three problems, which are “is there the existence of information sovereignty”, “what is the internal structure of information sovereignty power” and “how does the legal restriction on information sovereignty”. Then, three aspects of judges are concluded, namely the sovereignty has extended from the land, sea, air space and subsoil to information space; internal structure of information sovereignty power is equal interaction among information control right, management right and information resources sharing right; legal restrictions on information sovereignty includes internal and external oriented. Internally, legal restrictions on information sovereignty are divided into two regular patterns of relatively strict and relatively loose. Externally, information sovereignty should be respected and information resources sharing right should be utilized under law and information sovereignty is restained from mutating into hegemony.As information sovereignty arises at the historic moment, it is the concept in the information age and built on sovereign theory, which is open rather than closed; development rather than stagnation; relative rather than absolute. In modern society, for the pursuit of freedom, rational worship and human concern, people are required to release from transcendent worship of god power as well as preventing countries to regain transcendental power instead of god. To cope with the challenge of information hegemony and restrain information sovereignty from expanding into the integration, information sovereignty is imposed on legal restrictions and it is maintained to be public power in rule of law. In theoretical level, information sovereignty theory is contribute to clarifying the relation between the belongs and exercising of information sovereignty, and the relationship between citizens and states; in practice, it provides theoretical support for some practical problems such as protecting the citizens' information right, maintaining information space order of its own country, formulating global information space management rules and constructing peace and developing order in information space.