As Congress continues to struggle to create effective means for governing the Internet, some software companies have sidestepped civic processes and taken the debate into the commercial sphere. To sell their software security products, computer companies recast Internet security strictly as private, not public, concerns, in a way that generates as much fear as the ads claim to eliminate. This article examines the rhetoric advertisements employ to persuade customers that the Internet is a hostile anticommunity through which only well-protected individuals can navigate safely.
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