A Study On Natioal Soverengityin Network Era

The spring up and continous development of the Internet and global network space have made far-reaching impact on the international law and the establishment of international order. Under the circumstances of the Internet, the traditional sovereignty concept, especial the absolute sovereignty concept is being challenged.The freedom and unboundedness of the Internet is completely different from the independence and fixed boundary of nations. The mutual reliance among nations increased greatly, and it is difficult for only one nation to cope with the law problem,moreover, the nations have to give up part of their sovereignty or self-limit their sovereignty with the international organizations having more power and higher position. These require coordination and cooperation among nations, which also means that the nations have to give up part of their sovereignty or limit their sovereignty to help to bring up effective cooperation. In the meantime, national security is also challenged unprecedentedly, and information security becomes an important aspect of national security. With this background, it becomes urgent to enhance the affiliation among nations and law-makings on the Internet. So from the angle of internatioal law, it is a subject of era characteristics to study the influence of the Internet on International Law.In regard to International law, the Internet's influences focus on national sovereignty and security. The network space is without country boundaries. In the network space, the national power and control are weakened greatly, which will definiteIy impact International Laws based on the theory of traditional national sovereignty, not only in such areas of national political independence, economic sovereignty, cultural security, information security, but also in areas of the definition of the country' administration rights and cooperation in the network space. Therefore, the study on Internet challenge to national sovereignty and security is aimed at looking for the countermeasures to preserve national sovereignty and security in the network space. This task is more urgent for the developing countries.To preserve the network sovereignty and national security, it is needed to master and analyse the characteristics of national sovereignty in network space. To cope with the network challenge to national sovereignty, it is needed to enhance cooperations of the country' administration. With cooperations among nations, laws will be made to preserve national sovereignty and security in network space.