The Internet Is A System Of Computer Networks That Allows Individuals GMAT Reading Comprehension

Reading Passage Question

The Internet is a system of computer networks that allows individuals and organizations to communicate freely with other Internet users throughout the world. As a result, an astonishing (5) variety of information is able to flow unimpeded across national and other political borders, presenting serious difficulties for traditional approaches to legislation and law enforcement, to which such borders are crucial.

(10) Control over physical space and the objects located in it is a defining attribute of sovereignty. Lawmaking presupposes some mechanism for enforcement, i.e., the ability to control violations. But jurisdictions cannot control the information and (15) transactions flowing across their borders via the Internet. For example, a government might seek to intercept transmissions that propagate the kinds of consumer fraud that it regulates within its jurisdiction. But the volume of electronic communications

(20) crossing its territorial boundaries is too great to allow for effective control over individual transmissions. In order to deny its citizens access to specific materials, a government would thus have to prevent them from using the Internet altogether. Such a draconian (25) measure would almost certainly be extremely unpopular, since most affected citizens would probably feel that the benefits of using the Internet decidedly outweigh the risks.

One legal domain that is especially sensitive to (30) geographical considerations is governing trademarks. There is no global registration of trademarks; international protection requires registration in each country. Moreover, within a country, the same name can sometimes be used (35) proprietarily by businesses of different kinds in the same locality, or by businesses of the same kind in different localities, on the grounds that use of the trademark by one such business does not affect the others. But with the advent of the Internet, a business (40) name can be displayed in such a way as to be accessible from any computer connected to the Internet anywhere in the world. Should such a display advertising a restaurant in Norway be deemed to infringe a trademark in Brazil just because it can be (45) accessed freely from Brazil? It is not clear that any particular country’s trademark authorities possess, or should possess, jurisdiction over such displays. Otherwise, any use of a trademark on the Internet could be subject to the jurisdiction of every country (50) simultaneously.

The Internet also gives rise to situations in which regulation is needed but cannot be provided within the existing framework. For example, electronic communications, which may pass through many (55) different territorial jurisdictions, pose perplexing new questions about the nature and adequacy of privacy protections. Should French officials have lawful access to messages traveling via the Internet from Canada to Japan? This is just one among many (60) questions that collectively challenge the notion that the Internet can be effectively controlled by the existing system of territorial jurisdictions.

“The Internet is a system of computer networks that allows individuals”- is a passage for the GMAT that addresses reading comprehension. Candidates must have a firm understanding of GMAT reading comprehension in English. This GMAT reading comprehension section consists of eight comprehension questions. The purpose of the GMAT Reading Comprehension questions is to assess a candidate's capacity to understand, evaluate, and apply knowledge or ideas. By responding to the GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions section, candidates can actively practice.

Solutions and Explanation

1. Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main point of the passage?

(A) The high-volume, global nature of activity on the Internet undermines the feasibility of controlling it through legal frameworks that presuppose geographic boundaries.
(B) The system of Internet communications simultaneously promotes and weakens the power of national governments to control their citizens’ speech and financial transactions.
(C) People value the benefits of their participation on the Internet so highly that they would strongly oppose any government efforts to regulate their Internet activity.
(D) Internet communications are responsible for a substantial increase in the volume and severity of global crime.
(E) Current Internet usage and its future expansion pose a clear threat to the internal political stability of many nations.

2. The author mentions French officials in connection with messages traveling between Canada and Japan (lines 57–59) primarily to

(A) emphasize that the Internet allows data to be made available to users worldwide
(B) illustrate the range of languages that might be used on the Internet
(C) provide an example of a regulatory problem arising when an electronic communication intended for a particular destination passes through intermediate jurisdictions
(D) show why any use of a trademark on the Internet could be subject to the jurisdiction of every country simultaneously
(E) highlight the kind of international cooperation that made the Internet possible

3. According to the passage, which one of the following is an essential property of political sovereignty?

(A) control over business enterprises operating across territorial boundaries
(B) authority over communicative exchanges occurring within a specified jurisdiction
(C) power to regulate trademarks throughout a circumscribed geographic region
(D) control over the entities included within a designated physical space
(E) authority over all commercial transactions involving any of its citizens

4. Which one of the following words employed by the author in the second paragraph is most indicative of the author’s attitude toward any hypothetical measure a government might enact to deny its citizens access to the Internet?

(A) benefits
(B) decidedly
(C) unpopular
(D) draconian
(E) risks

5. What is the main purpose of the fourth paragraph?

(A) to call into question the relevance of the argument provided in the second paragraph
(B) to provide a practical illustration that questions the general claim made in the first paragraph
(C) to summarize the arguments provided in the second and third paragraphs
(D) to continue the argument that begins in the third paragraph
(E) to provide an additional argument in support of the general claim made in the first paragraph

Suggested GMAT Reading Comprehension Samples

• Innovations in language are never completely new GMAT Reading Comprehension
• My objective is to analyse certain forms of knowledge, not in terms of repression or law, but in terms of power GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Concord staked its claim to be the birthplace of Independence GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Since 1789, the Constitution has granted the President the authority to veto legislation passed by Congress GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Wherever the crime novels of P. D. James are discussed by critics GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Recently the focus of historical studies of different ethnic groups in the United States has shifted GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Some recent historians have argued that life in the British colonies in America from approximately 1763 to 1789 was marked by internal conflicts among colonists GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Many literary detectives have pored over a great puzzle concerning the writer Marcel Proust: what happened in 1909? GMAT Reading Comprehension
• In February 1848 the People of Paris Rose in Revolt Against the Constitutional Monarchy GMAT Reading Comprehension
• In the early twentieth century, the idea that pianists should be musician-scholars GMAT Reading Comprehension
• The recent change to all-volunteer armed forces in the United States will eventually produce GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Mary Barton, particularly in its early chapters, is a moving response to the suffering of the industrial worker GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Freud's professional frustrations, and their political background in the growing anti-Semitism of Vienna GMAT Reading Comprehension
• The work of English writer Aphra Behn (1640-1689) changed markedly GMAT Reading Comprehension
• The industrial revolution in nineteenth-century Europe brought about a GMAT Reading Comprehension
• It may be interesting to indicate, as briefly as possible, the chief GMAT Reading Comprehension
• In the past century, Irish painting has changed from a British-influenced GMAT Reading Comprehension
• When views can freely flourish in the marketplace of ideas, individual GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Ronald Dworkin argues that judges are in danger of uncritically GMAT Reading Comprehension
• There is no complete life of Alexandre Dumas GMAT Reading Comprehension