In The Electronic Silk Road: How the Web Binds the World in Commerce (Yale University Press, 2013), Anupam Chander places the globalization of information services under the spotlight. Net-Work or Trade 2.0 is the phenomenon of information services delivered remotely through communication systems, on a global scale: writing software code, calling centers, accounting, radiology and legal services, are a few of the examples discussed in the book. The service providers are located in one country (e.g., India), and the recipients are in another country, (e.g., the United States). Chander offers a rich and critical evaluation of Net-Work. He argues that the services are provided in both directions of the developed-developing countries division, with Google, Facebook and Apple serving as leading examples of the developed-to-developing direction. Enter the law, and the question becomes one of conflict of laws: which law governs online services? Chander recognizes four dimensions: legal barriers to online trade of services, an inadequate legal infrastructure, the question of jurisdiction, and the risk of balkanization, i.e., the concern that each country will impose its laws onto “its” internet environment. He offers a thoughtful and multidimensional answer, meant to both liberalize and regulate cybertrade. This review summarizes the book's main arguments, along its two main parts – the description and challenges of Trade 2.0, and the proposed normative framework. I argue that the description of net-work is somewhat too optimistic, in that it is not sufficiently sensitive to the asymmetry of the import/export balance among the developed and developing countries. The book’s normative argument, I shall argue, also downplays power relationships. Acknowledging that power relationships shape what kind of services are provided by whom to whom, and that they affect the governing law, requires further nuancing of net-work. However, Chander’s overall argument is attractive and offers a fresh outlook on a fast growing aspect of our digital and commercial lives
