1. The Dream
Mueller begins by killing off the dream of the Internet as a free and utopic device. He believes that the list of infringements to our freedoms is getting too long defend ourselves from: “For every innovation, there is an impostor…and we cannot escape it because it is invading our pockets through our mobile telephones.” “As long as we cling to that fallacy we will lose what is worth keeping about the original dream,” says Mueller.  Therefore, we need to redefine what we mean by “Internet freedom”. (13)

2. Rights
“The relationships between privacy, security and freedom are double-edged”, explains Mueller. An excess or lack of privacy or security can sacrifice our freedoms. Mueller concludes that “One cannot talk sensibly, much less scientifically, about privacy and security on the Internet without grounding the discussion in a commitment to clearly defined individual rights.” Therefore, we need to begin with a discussion of individual rights so that we can avoid messy inconsistencies where the law attempts to justify rights based on whim or group circumstance. More to the point: freedom needs to come first.

3. Order
Mueller contrasts the writings of Lawrence Lessig and Friedrich Hayek to exemplify how we might begin to discuss the laws and institutions necessary for building freedom on the web.  Lessig’s “code is law” implies the hierarchical influence of information technology over the user, or as Mueller has paraphrased: “code and law express the power of some people over others”. Hayek, on the other hand, uses the example of language and patterns of grammar to exhibit that these “rules and conventions are constraints”, while at the same time the rules of language enable freedom. Mueller sides with Hayek’s model and adds that the code of TCP/IP was law in Hayek’s sense of the laws of language, and not Lessig’s hierarchical law.

4. Institutions
Institutionalism is Mueller’s social science approach in his research that refers not to the organizations, but to the rules and roles of individual actors. Here he addresses two major problem issues: (1) the problem of nation-state vs. global governance and (2) the responsibility ofISPs. Mueller also questions the ISPs