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Internet governance is the development and application of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programs that shape the evolution and use of the Internet. This article describes how the Internet was and is currently governed, some of the controversies that occurred along the way, and the ongoing debates about how the Internet should or should not be governed in the future.

Internet governance should not be confused with E-Governance, which refers to governments' use of technology to carry out their governing duties.

Background

Main article: Internet

No one person, company, organization or government runs the Internet. It is a globally distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. It operates without a central governing body with each constituent network setting and enforcing its own policies. Its governance is conducted by a decentralized and international multistakeholder network of interconnected autonomous groups drawing from civil society, the private sector, governments, the academic and research communities and national and international organizations. They work cooperatively from their respective roles to create shared policies and standards that maintain the Internet's global interoperability for the public good.

Who-Runs-the-Internet-graphic

However, to help ensure interoperability, several key technical and policy aspects of the underlying core infrastructure and the principal namespaces are administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. ICANN oversees the assignment of globally unique identifiers on the Internet, including domain names, Internet protocol addresses, application port numbers in the transport protocols, and many other parameters. This seeks to create a globally unified namespace to ensure the global reach of the Internet. ICANN is governed by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet's technical, business, academic, and other non-commercial communities. However, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, continues to have final approval over changes to the DNS root zone.[1][2] This authority over the root zone file makes ICANN one of a few bodies with global, centralized influence over the otherwise distributed Internet.[3] In the 30 September 2009 Affirmation of Commitments by the Department of Commerce and ICANN, the Department of Commerce finally affirmed that a "private coordinating process…is best able to flexibly meet the changing needs of the Internet and of Internet users" (para. 4).[4] While ICANN itself interpreted this as a declaration of its independence, scholars still point out that this is not yet the case. Considering that the U.S. Department of Commerce can unilaterally terminate the Affirmation of Commitments with ICANN, the authority of DNS administration is likewise seen as revocable and derived from a single State, namely the United States.[5]

The technical underpinning and standardization of the Internet's core protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.

On 16 November 2005, the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in Tunis, established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to open an ongoing, non-binding conversation among multiple stakeholders about the future of Internet governance.[6] Since WSIS, the term "Internet governance" has been broadened beyond narrow technical concerns to include a wider range of Internet-related policy issues.[7][8]

Definition

The definition of Internet governance has been contested by differing groups across political and ideological lines.[9] One of the main debates concerns the authority and participation of certain actors, such as national governments, corporate entities and civil society, to play a role in the Internet's governance.

A working group established after a UN-initiated World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) proposed the following definition of Internet governance as part of its June 2005 report:

Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.[10]

Law professor Yochai Benkler developed a conceptualization of Internet governance by the idea of three "layers" of governance:[11]

  • Physical infrastructure layer (through which information travels)
  • Code or logical layer (controls the infrastructure)
  • Content layer (contains the information signaled through the network)

Professors Jovan Kurbalija and Laura DeNardis also offer comprehensive definitions to "Internet Governance". According to Kurbalija, the broad approach to Internet Governance goes "beyond Internet infrastructural aspects and address other legal, economic, developmental, and sociocultural issues";[12] along similar lines, DeNardis argues that "Internet Governance generally refers to policy and technical coordination issues related to the exchange of information over the Internet".[13] One of the more policy-relevant questions today is exactly whether the regulatory responses are appropriate to police the content delivered through the Internet: it includes important rules for the improvement of Internet safety and for dealing with threats such as cyber-bullying, copyright infringement, data protection and other illegal or disruptive activities.[14]

History

Main article: History of the Internet

To understand how the Internet is managed today, it is necessary to know a little of its history. The original ARPANET is one of the components which eventually evolved to become the Internet. As its name suggests the ARPANET was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency within the U.S. Department of Defense.[15] During the development of ARPANET, a numbered series of Request for Comments (RFCs) memos documented technical decisions and methods of working as they evolved. The standards of today's Internet are still documented by RFCs.[16]

Between 1984 and 1986 the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) created the NSFNET backbone, using TCP/IP, to connect their supercomputing facilities. NSFNET became a general-purpose research network, a hub to connect the supercomputing centers to each other and to the regional research and education networks that would in turn connect campus networks.[17] The combined networks became generally known as the Internet. By the end of 1989, Australia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the UK were connected to the Internet, which had grown to contain more than 160,000 hosts.

In 1990, the ARPANET was formally terminated. In 1991 the NSF began to relax its restrictions on commercial use on NSFNET and commercial network providers began to interconnect. The final restrictions on carrying commercial traffic ended on 30 April 1995, when the NSF ended its sponsorship of the NSFNET Backbone Service and the service ended.[18][19] Today almost all Internet infrastructure in the United States, and large portion in other countries, is provided and owned by the private sector. Traffic is exchanged between these networks, at major interconnection points, in accordance with established Internet standards and commercial agreements.

Governors

During 1979 the Internet Configuration Control Board was founded by DARPA to oversee the network's development. During 1984 it was renamed the Internet Advisory Board (IAB), and during 1986 it became the Internet Activities Board.[20][21]

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) was formed during 1986 by the U.S. government to develop and promote Internet standards. It consisted initially of researchers, but by the end of the year participation was available to anyone, and its business was performed largely by email.[22][23]

From the early days of the network until his death during 1998, Jon Postel oversaw address allocation and other Internet protocol numbering and assignments in his capacity as Director of the Computer Networks Division at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California, under a contract from the Department of Defense. This function eventually became known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and as it expanded to include management of the global Domain Name System (DNS) root servers, a small organization grew. Postel also served as RFC Editor.

Allocation of IP addresses was delegated to five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs):

After Jon Postel's death in 1998, IANA became part of ICANN, a California nonprofit established in September 1998 by the U.S. government and awarded a contract by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Initially two board members were elected by the Internet community at large, though this was changed by the rest of the board in 2002 in a poorly attended public meeting in Accra, Ghana.[24]

In 1992 the Internet Society (ISOC) was founded, with a mission to "assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world".[25] Its members include individuals (anyone may join) as well as corporations, organizations, governments, and universities. The IAB was renamed the Internet Architecture Board, and became part of ISOC. The Internet Engineering Task Force also became part of the ISOC. The IETF is overseen currently by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), and longer-term research is carried on by the Internet Research Task Force and overseen by the Internet Research Steering Group.

At the first World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva in 2003, the topic of Internet governance was discussed. ICANN's status as a private corporation under contract to the U.S. government created controversy among other governments, especially Brazil, China, South Africa, and some Arab states. Since no general agreement existed even on the definition of what comprised Internet governance, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan initiated a Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) to clarify the issues and report before the second part of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis 2005. After much controversial debate, during which the U.S. delegation refused to consider surrendering the U.S. control of the Root Zone file, participants agreed on a compromise to allow for wider international debate on the policy principles. They agreed to establish an Internet Governance Forum (IGF), to be convened by the United Nations Secretary General before the end of the second quarter of 2006. The Greek government volunteered to host the first such meeting.[26]

Annual global IGFs have been held since 2006, with the Forum renewed for five years by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2010.[27] In addition to the annual global IGF, regional IGFs have been organized in Africa, the Arab region, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in sub-regions. in December 2015, the United Nations General Assembly renewed the IGF for another ten years, in the context of the WSIS 10-year overall review.[28]

Globalization and governance controversy

Role of ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce

The position of the U.S. Department of Commerce as the controller of some aspects of the Internet gradually attracted criticism from those who felt that control should be more international. A hands-off philosophy by the Department of Commerce helped limit this criticism, but this was undermined in 2005 when the Bush administration intervened to help kill the .xxx top-level domain proposal,[29] and, much more severely, following the 2013 disclosures of mass surveillance by the U.S. government.[30]

When the IANA functions were handed over to ICANN, a new U.S. nonprofit, controversy increased. ICANN's decision-making process was criticised by some observers as being secretive and unaccountable. When the directors' posts which had previously been elected by the "at-large" community of Internet users were abolished, some feared that ICANN would become illegitimate and its qualifications questionable, due to the fact that it was now losing the aspect of being a neutral governing body. ICANN stated that it was merely streamlining decision-making, and developing a structure suitable for the modern Internet.

Other topics of controversy included the creation and control of generic top-level domains (.com, .org, and possible new ones, such as .biz or .xxx), the control of country-code domains, recent proposals for a large increase in ICANN's budget and responsibilities, and a proposed "domain tax" to pay for the increase.

There were also suggestions that individual governments should have more control, or that the International Telecommunication Union or the United Nations should have a function in Internet governance.[31]

IBSA proposal (2011)

One controversial proposal to this effect, resulting from a September 2011 summit between India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA), would seek to move internet governance into a "UN Committee on Internet-Related Policy" (UN-CIRP).[32][33] The move was a reaction to a perception that the principles of the 2005 Tunis Agenda for the Information Society have not been met.[33][34] The statement called for the subordination of independent technical organizations such as ICANN and the ITU to a political organization operating under the auspices of the United Nations.[33] After outrage from India’s civil society and media, the Indian government backed away from the proposal.[35]

Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation (2013)

On 7 October 2013 the Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation was released by the leaders of a number of organizations involved in coordinating the Internet's global technical infrastructure, loosely known as the "I*" (or "I-star") group. Among other things, the statement "expressed strong concern over the undermining of the trust and confidence of Internet users globally due to recent revelations of pervasive monitoring and surveillance" and "called for accelerating the globalization of ICANN and IANA functions, towards an environment in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an equal footing". This desire to move away from a United States centric approach is seen as a reaction to the ongoing NSA surveillance scandal. The statement was signed by the heads of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Architecture Board, the World Wide Web Consortium, the Internet Society, and the five regional Internet address registries (African Network Information Center, American Registry for Internet Numbers, Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre, Latin America and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry, and Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre).[36][37][38]

Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance (NetMundial) (2013)

In October 2013, Fadi Chehadé, former President and CEO of ICANN, met with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia. Upon Chehadé's invitation, the two announced that Brazil would host an international summit on Internet governance in April 2014.[39] The announcement came after the 2013 disclosures of mass surveillance by the U.S. government, and President Rousseff's speech at the opening session of the 2013 United Nations General Assembly, where she strongly criticized the U.S. surveillance program as a "breach of international law". The "Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance (NETMundial)" will include representatives of government, industry, civil society, and academia.[40] At the IGF VIII meeting in Bali in October 2013 a commentator noted that Brazil intends the meeting to be a "summit" in the sense that it will be high level with decision-making authority.[30] The organizers of the "NETmundial" meeting have decided that an online forum called "/1net", set up by the I* group, will be a major conduit of non-governmental input into the three committees preparing for the meeting in April.[38][41][42]

NetMundial managed to convene a large number of global actors to produce a consensus statement on internet governance principles and a roadmap for the future evolution of the internet governance ecosystem. NETmundial Multistakeholder Statement – the outcome of the Meeting – was elaborated in an open and participatory manner, by means of successive consultations.[43] This consensus should be qualified in that even though the statement was adopted by consensus, some participants, specifically the Russian Federation, India, Cuba, and ARTICLE 19, representing some participants from civil society expressed some dissent with its contents and the process.[44]

NetMundial Initiative (2014)

The NetMundial Initiative is an initiative by ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade along with representatives of the World Economic Forum (WEF)[45] and the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil), commonly referred to as "CGI.br".,[46] which was inspired by the 2014 NetMundial meeting.

A month later, the Panel On Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms (convened by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) with assistance from The Annenberg Foundation), supported and included the NetMundial statement in its own report.[47]

See also

Internet bodies

United Nations bodies

References

  1. ^ Klein, Hans. (2004). "ICANN and Non-Territorial Sovereignty: Government Without the Nation State." Internet and Public Policy Project. Georgia Institute of Technology.
  2. ^ Packard, Ashley (2010). Digital Media Law. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-4051-8169-3.
  3. ^ Mueller, Milton L. (2010). Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance. MIT Press. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-262-01459-5.
  4. ^ "Affirmation of Commitments by the United States Department of Commerce and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers". ICANN. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
  5. ^ Woltag, Johann-Christoph (2012). Rüdiger Wolfrum (ed.). Internet. Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-965791-9.
  6. ^ Mueller, Milton L. (2010). Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance. MIT Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-262-01459-5.
  7. ^ Mueller, Milton L. (2010). Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance. MIT Press. pp. 79–80. ISBN 978-0-262-01459-5.
  8. ^ DeNardis, Laura, The Emerging Field of Internet Governance (17 September 2010). Yale Information Society Project Working Paper Series.
  9. ^ Malte Ziewitz/Christian Pentzold, "In search of internet governance: Performing order in digitally networked environments", New Media & Society 16 (2014): pp. 306-322.
  10. ^ "Report of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG)", June 2005), p.4.
  11. ^ Yochai Benkler, "From Consumers to Users: Shifting the Deeper Structures of Regulation Towards Sustainable Commons and User Access", 52 Fed. Comm. L.J. 561, (2000).
  12. ^ Jovan Kurbalija, "An Introduction to Internet Governance", 5 ed, DiploFoundation (2012).
  13. ^ Laura DeNardis, "The Emerging Field of Internet Governance" (17 September 2010), Yale Information Society Project Working Paper Series.
  14. ^ On this, see e.g. Nicola Lucchi, "Internet Content Governace & Human Rights" 16 Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law Vol. 16, n. 4 (2014) 809-856.
  15. ^ A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade (Report). Arlington, VA: Bolt, Beranek & Newman Inc. 1 April 1981.
  16. ^ "RFC's, Internet Request For Comments". Livinginternet.com. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  17. ^ NSFNET: A Partnership for High-Speed Networking, Final Report 19877-1995, Karen D. Frazer, Merit Network, Inc., 1995
  18. ^ "Retiring the NSFNET Backbone Service: Chronicling the End of an Era", Susan R. Harris, Ph.D., and Elise Gerich, ConneXions, Vol. 10, No. 4, April 1996
  19. ^ "A Brief History of the Internet".
  20. ^ "History page from the IAB website". Retrieved 11 November 2011.
  21. ^ RFC 2850: Charter of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), May 2000
  22. ^ "Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)". RIPE NCC. 10 August 2012. Retrieved 13 October 2012.
  23. ^ O. Jacobsen, D. Lynch, Interop, Inc. (March 1991). "A Glossary of Networking Terms". IETF. Retrieved 13 October 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  24. ^ "Net governance chief will step down next year", David McGuire, Washingtonpost.com, 28 May 2002.
  25. ^ Internet Society (ISOC) All About The Internet: History of the Internet
  26. ^ "Internet governance: U.S., Developing countries strike deal", Innocent Gore, Africa News Service, 21 November 2005
  27. ^ "UN General Assembly Resolution 65/141. Information and communications technologies for development" (PDF). 11 February 2011. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  28. ^ "UNGA Resolution 70/125 Outcome document of the high-level meeting of the General Assembly on the overall review of the implementation of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society" (PDF). 13 December 2015. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  29. ^ "Bush administration objects to .xxx domains", Declan McCullagh, CNet News, 15 August 205. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
  30. ^ a b "Chair's Summary", Eighth Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), Bali, Indonesia, 22–25 October 2013. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
  31. ^ Goldsmith/Wu, Jack/Tim (2006). Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World. New York: Oxford University Press Inc. p. 171. ISBN 978-0-19-515266-1.
  32. ^ Bamzai, Sandeep (20 October 2012). "Muzzlers of the Free Internet". London: Mail Today (New Delhi, India). Retrieved 15 March 2013.
  33. ^ a b c "Recommendations from the IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) Multistakeholder meeting on Global Internet Governance", 1–2 September 2011, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  34. ^ "Tunis Agenda for the Information Society", World Summit on the Information Society, 18 November 2005
  35. ^ Kaul, Mahima. "India changes its internet governance position — backs away from UN proposal". UNCUT. Retrieved 15 March 2013.
  36. ^ Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation, ICANN, 7 October 2013. Retrieved 12 October 2013.
  37. ^ "Brazil's anti-NSA prez urged to SNATCH keys to the internet from America", Rik Myslewski, The Register, 11 October 2013. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
  38. ^ a b Milton Mueller (19 November 2013). "Booting up Brazil". IGP Blog. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  39. ^ "Entrevista com Fadi Chehadé: Brasil sediará encontro mundial de governança da internet em 2014", Palácio do Planalto, 9 October 2013. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
  40. ^ "Brazil to host global internet summit in ongoing fight against NSA surveillance", RT News, 10 October 2013. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
  41. ^ "CENTR: Internet Governance in 2013 and What's Coming Up in 2014". CircleID. 27 January 2014. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  42. ^ Paul Wilson (29 November 2013). "What Is "1net" to Me". CircleID blog. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  43. ^ "NETmundial Multistakeholder Statement" (PDF). 24 April 2014. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  44. ^ ""NETmundial–Closing Session" (p 21-24)" (PDF). 6 September 2014. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  45. ^ NETmundial Initiative - Debrief with Founding Partners, retrieved 14 April 2015
  46. ^ Public Declaration on the NETmundial Initiative issued by members of the board of CGI.br, 24 November 2014, retrieved 14 April 2015
  47. ^ "Towards a Collaborative, Decentralized Internet Governance Ecosystem - report by the Panel On Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms". 20 May 2014. Retrieved 2 June 2014.

Further reading

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Internet Governance

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