ARTHUR C. CLARKE wrote a story in which the entire universe was created so that monks could ritually write out the nine billion names of God. The monks buy a computer to do this faster and better, with unfortunate consequences for the rest of us. The story’s last sentence: “Overhead, without any fuss, the stars ...

How can democratic societies protect—and protect themselves from—the free flow of digital information? The Internet was going to set us all free. At least, that is what U.S. policy makers, pundits, and scholars believed in the 2000s.  The Internet would undermine authoritarian rulers by reducing the government’s stranglehold on debate, helping oppressed people realize how ...