The Global Governance of the Internet - Essay Example

?The Global Governance of the Internet Introduction The implication of the Internet for the established notions of governance and jurisdiction is complex, but in fact points to a very crucial issue: the dynamism of the Internet and how to regulate it. Why is the Internet dynamic? Above all, the Internet offers global presence. ‘Everywhereness’ is possibly the distinguishing feature of the dynamism of the Internet. Geography is an irrelevant matter for Internet users; hence, regulating the Internet has legal and jurisdictional dilemmas. Moreover, no particular nation or body has power over the Internet. Without a doubt, this dispersed nature has been one of the paramount attributes of Internet dynamism, but it also has raised serious problems. Favourably, Internet dynamism have led to a spectacular outburst of human innovation in terms of new consumer prospects and choices, new commercial channels, and new global information and communication systems. But, unfavourably, the dynamism of the Internet has compounded any effort to regulate it, hold cybercriminals responsible, and resolve conflicts (Mueller, 2010, pp. 175-176). This condition where in a responsible entity or cybercriminal is unknown expresses itself in everyday occurrences: online identity theft, e-mail spam, network viruses, etc. Making matters more complicated is the fact that several nations and jurisdictions also seek someone to be held responsible when their legal principles or societal standards are violated (Thierer & Crews, 2003, p. 16). New, innovative technologies can pose problems for policymakers, who often try to control new technologies that they have little knowledge about. The Internet has been particularly challenging for local and global policymakers because its affordability, accessibility, and inclusiveness helped its popularity to flourish at an unparalleled speed. Unfortunately, the Internet is almost impossible to regulate or control because it is not owned by anybody, and hence anyone can use, or abuse, it from anywhere in the world. Even when an unidentified person does something other people believe to be offensive—like downloading and sharing copyrighted video or music files or posting pornography—it is very difficult to identify the wrongdoer. Thus policymakers have been trying to develop regulations and policies for the Internet in order to identify and prevent cybercrimes or illegal activities on the Internet, like pornography and gambling. In other words, these policymakers are trying to mitigate the adverse outcomes of Internet dynamism. It is the contention of this essay that global rules for the Internet would not undermine its dynamism; in fact, global rule will safeguard and reinforce it. The Need to Regulate the Internet The dynamism of the Internet, which in turn spawned commercialisation, popularity, and ubiquity of the cyberspace, has resulted in some common social dilemmas and conflicts in the Internet. The illegal downloading of video and music files, the proliferation of corrupted forms of speech, and the disintegration of privacy are some of the examples of these dilemmas. Simultaneously, e-commerce merchants have been violated by hackers (Schwabach, 2006, p. 309). It is immature to believe that the best solution can be social rules, the market, or the law alone. The complicated problems raised by the Internet can only be solved through the combination of the market, social rules, and the law. Even though there is a certain extent of controversy on how to regulate the Internet, nobody disputes the importance of some form of global rule and technical management. Regardless of opposition to regulatory supervision, the Internet cannot endure with the absence of this global rule. There should be regulatory entities that take care of usual and everyday technical issues like the supervision of IP addresses and domain names and the establishment of technical norms (Mueller, 1998, p. 93). Two main policy organisations that offer Internet governance are the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which creates technical norms, and the World Wide Web Consortium, a global entity that establishes international norms (Brousseau, Marzouki, & Meadel, 2012, p. 49). The Domain Name System (DNS), which connects groups’ domain names to the definite Internet Protocol (IP) address, also requires supervision. Domain names were developed to enforce a certain extent of order on the Internet (Brousseau et al., 2012, pp. 49-50). At this level of Internet’s progress, it would be unwise to assert which of the regulatory systems might really succeed. It evolved silently, but the lately resolved World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva is a breaking point in Internet’s history. Despite their major differences, nations joined together to discuss the urgency of identifying and establishing some sort of global rule for the cyberspace (Mueller, 2010, p. 65). The Declaration of Principles brings up the importance of Internet governance. Furthermore, it visualises a key contribution of governments to this global governance. As stated in the Declaration, “Policy authority for Internet-related public policy issues is the sovereign right of States. They have rights and responsibilities for international Internet-related public policy issues” (Mueller, 2010, p. 65). Beforehand, the Internet was extolled for its rule-free or governance-free characteristic. As notably stated by John Perry Barlow in his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace in 1996 (Schwabach, 2006, p. 331): Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace... You have no sovereignty where we gather... We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one. But, surprisingly, the citizens of the World Wide Web did not resist or oppose the affirmation of the WSIS. The rising commercialisation of the cyberspace, the explosion of intellectual property rights infringement, identity theft, and so on is threatening the dynamism of the Internet. The dynamism, innovation, or ingenuity of the Internet has to be safeguarded from those who would exploit abuse and anarchy (Spinello, 2010, p. 102). In other words, global rule for the Internet is urgently and seriously needed. There are numerous core causes of this predicament, apparently. However, the major cause relate to the Internet’s global decentralised feature and the consequent weakness of earlier networks of regulation (Schwabach, 2006, p. 331). The cyberspace obviously calls for rules. However, efforts to create a new governance system are more likely to fail if they focus entirely on the nation-state, which fundamentally is confined in its centralised power. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) presents one ground-breaking example of management. Even though ICANN has had numerous challenging dilemmas, its supervision of the DNS nevertheless offers a useful demonstration of how a global asset can be handled by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) (Christou & Simpson, 2007, p. 150). Apparently, ICANN and other organisations are flawed and their capacity is restricted. Many can be learned from their weaknesses. For instance, the major issues of ICANN provide a valuable set of instructions in creating a more successful structure of policymaking for the cyberspace. Even though the current developments in the organisation may have propelled it on a new direction, ICANN is still plagued by criticisms that it has been poorly responsive and involved (Christou & Simpson, 2007, pp. 150-151; Mueller, 2010, p. 234). Specifically, civil society groups and developing nations believed that they were taken for granted in the decision-making process. This feeling of abandonment has weakened the authority and legality of ICANN, and thus curtailed its efficacy (Mueller, 2010, pp. 234-235): it raises an advisory reminder that any mechanism of global policymaking has to engage as many participants as possible. The global rule for the Internet, in other words, should be rooted in a doctrine of multi-sectoral membership or involvement. This doctrine is integral to effective global regulation of the Internet. Traditional governance depends largely on the penalising and intimidating methods of the state (Kobrin, 2011, p. 692). However, strong global governance of the Internet is likely to depend on traditions of mutual concern and respect (Spinello, 2002, p. 88). Its legitimacy will thus rest significantly in its authority and that, consequently, will depend on views of involvement, a feeling that actors representing different areas and sectors have an influence on Internet decision making. Civil society can serve a valuable function in the global regulation of the Internet because it generally is global in nature. Because Internet governance necessitates global collaboration, it is obviously vital to involve groups or organisations with global influence. Civil society groups and global NGOs, which have proliferated across the globe recently, are preferably tasked to fulfil the function of a global agent embodying all sectors of the international community (Brousseau et al., 2012, p. 382). Such support is specifically vital as a way of involving developing nations in the global governance of the Internet. The initial disappointments of ICANN clearly reveal the threats of multilateral governance systems that are unable to meet the demands of developing countries. With the absence of a participatory mechanism, global policymaking bodies will be deficient of authority and legitimacy. Possibly even more crucially, the inability to involve developing countries in the processes of policymaking will result in an inequity in those regulations, a total segregation of peoples and countries that will merely become more prominent as the Internet progresses (Kobrin, 2001, p. 695). These inequities will not merely impair developing countries; they will also weaken the Internet itself, inhibiting its progress and restricting the potentially new, ground-breaking technologies or features that may develop from the Internet community (Von Bernstorff, 2003, p. 518). Within these circumstances, global rules for the Internet will definitely weaken its dynamism. The Internet resists global rule due to a number of major reasons. First, the Internet’s scattered system and flexible structure makes it very difficult to regulate. For instance, packet-switching tools have implied that it is difficult to prevent information flow. As stated by John Gilmore, “Information can take so many alternative routes when one of the nodes of the network is removed that the Net is almost immortally flexible... The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it” (Spinello, 2002, p. 34). The absence of a physical axis in cyberspace suggests that it lacks a moral core that can be blamed for the flow of information over the network. Furthermore, information can be easily downloaded in the Internet. Negroponte explained that “The information superhighway is about the global movement of weightless bits at the speed of light” (Spinello, 2010, p. 33). All types of content can be digitised, and it is very hard to restrict a digital file. A specific implication of this is that sharing of digital files will threaten to damage the film and music industries. Ultimately, nations that try to regulate the Internet confront a range of jurisdictional problems. An underlying dilemma with a jurisdiction enforcing rules for the Internet is that regulations are geographically based—they have power only in a particular territory. Furthermore, because the cyberspace is borderless, it is not possible for any nation to impose rules for the Internet (Mueller, 2010, p. 186). If the UK makes a decision to legally prohibit pornography, it can only successfully impose this policy among British sources of pornography. It does not have the authority to prevent sources situated in Latin America or Asia from making pornography widely accessible on cyberspace. Apparently, according to Brousseau and colleagues (2012, p. 390), it can pressure Internet providers and charge them for passing on the illegal content regardless where its origin is situated. However, this appears to be an unjust and impractical solution because it is costly and hard for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to track and promptly remove all information with pornographic content. In spite of these barriers, global organisations and nations will not be dissuaded from policing the Internet. Take for instance the attempts of France to stop Yahoo from permitting Nazi keepsakes to be sold on its websites, even though the server is situated in the United States (Thierer & Crews, 2003, p. 18). Those legally complaining against Yahoo asserted that it infringed French law. However, the possible issue is that “anyone posting information on the Internet is unduly open to nearly any sovereign’s jurisdiction, since that information could have an effect around the world” (Thierer, 2003, p. 18). But besides regulation the flow of information or content, nations may adopt other kinds of Internet governance, like regulating e-commerce or information networks. Conclusions Many are still essentially hopeful that new governance approaches that will resolve current issues with the Internet will emerge. Global rules for the Internet will only strengthen its dynamism if three core aspects are taken into consideration: it should be global in its power and legitimacy; it should be characterised by geographically oriented participation; and it has to involve civil society groups. If all these considerations are met, global rules will further reinforce the potentials of the Internet. But more importantly, the Internet can become a medium towards stronger international coordination and accord. At a period when most disagreements are being pushed by rivalling beliefs and principles, a wide-ranging and global Internet can serve an integral function in promoting peaceful discourse and deliberation of those ideologies. References Brousseau, E., Marzouki, M., & Meadel, C. (2012). Governance, Regulation and Powers on the Internet. UK: Cambridge University Press. Christou, G. & Simpson, S. (2007). Gaining a Stake in Global Internet Governance: The EU, ICANN and Strategic Norm Manipulation. European Journal of Communication, 22(2), 147-164. Kobrin, S.J. (2001). Territoriality and the Governance of Cyberspace. Journal of International Business, 32(4), 687-704. Mueller, M. (1998). The Battle Over Internet Domain Names—Global or National TLDs? Telecommunications Policy, 22(2), 89-107. Mueller, M. (2010). Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance. Massachusetts: MIT Press. Schwabach, A. (2006). Internet and the Law: Technology, Society, and Compromises. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Spinello, R. (2002). Regulating Cyberspace: The Policies and Technologies of Control. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. Spinello, R. (2010). Cyberethics: Morality and Law in Cyberspace. UK: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Thierer, A., Crews, C.W. (2003). Who Rules the Net? Internet Governance and Jurisdiction. Washington, DC: Cato Institute. Von Bernstorff, J. (2003). Democratic Global Internet Regulation? Governance Networks, International Law and the Shadow of Hegemony. European Law Journal, 9(4), 511-526. Read More