Then maybe we should rewrite the international laws accordingly.
The whole idea of "a country owns its radio waves" hasn't held in practice for, basically, the entire history of radio waves.
And I don't think the tech companies are very trustworthy - but I'd trust many of them with power before I would trust a lot of the governments. Google is quite open about being evil now, but I'd still trust Google before I trust the governments of Saudi Arabia or Sudan.
Except you can't: countries exercise the monopoly on violence within their borders, and that specific detail delineates most other powers: e.g. if they want to setup and run high power jamming on their territory, then to stop them would take an act of war.
So in practice the agreements we make essentially cover making reasonable concessions so no one feels the need to start bombing things.
There are significant amounts of soft power between countries before it comes to physical force.
For example, how I'd have expected this to play out in an age that feels more and more a thing of the past:
- Country A's ingenious startup offers global satellite service, bypassing country B's telecom monopoly, without even fully registering it. (They employ more engineers than lawyers.)
- Country B complains to country A's government.
- Government A respects B's sovereignty, even though A is much larger and more powerful than B, and wants to reassure the world that the same rules apply to everybody. It slaps the startup on its wrist, under the (very implicit, never even hinted at) threat of further regulatory or legal action. (The startup pays taxes in A, and its executives live and can be arrested there.)
- The startup stops providing service on B's territory.
- The governments of A and B sit down together and negotiate, behind closed doors and without making it a big display of power, a deal that works for both of them, e.g. granting the startup access to the market of B, in exchange for complying with local regulations.
Obviously it has never worked like that between all countries and in all cases, but I'm just saying, this used to be seen as a desirable model by many.
The whole idea of "a country owns its radio waves" hasn't held in practice for, basically, the entire history of radio waves.
And I don't think the tech companies are very trustworthy - but I'd trust many of them with power before I would trust a lot of the governments. Google is quite open about being evil now, but I'd still trust Google before I trust the governments of Saudi Arabia or Sudan.