Applying the Public Trust Doctrine to the Governance of Content-Related Internet Resources

Abstract

This article explores the feasibility of applying the public trust doctrine (PTD) to the management of portals and search engines and discusses these tools’ crucial role for the materialization of the e-commons. The PTD establishes that certain resources are to be publicly owned and preserved because they are deemed essential for society. Through a theoretical and historical analysis of the doctrine, the authors contend that it is also possible to extend its application to cyberspace as a way to protect users’ right to navigate the Internet’s main gateways and roadways without ‘pay-per-placement’, targeted categorizations and other obstructions imposed by commercial web resources to access content.