There may well be no principle more important for understanding rule-making in cyberspace than that of distinguishing between the Internet as a whole and the individual networks that are its component members; it is indeed the interplay between the vast number of largely centralized individual networks and the decentralized internetwork through which they can communicate that will prove to be of fundamental importance in determining the efficacy with which State law can be imposed on individual network communities.

David G. Post, Anarchy, State, and the Internet:
An Essay on Law-Making in Cyberspace,

1995 J. ONLINE L. art. 3, par. 33