The internet is currently unpoliced. The nearest it has to a governing body is the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) of stakeholders - carriers, ISPs, academics, civil society, governments and international organisations - which is more like a parliament than an executive.
The IGF meets once a year and deals with topics such as: openness (the free flow of ideas and information); security (protecting users and networks); e-criminals (child abusers etc); cultural and linguistic diversity; and issues of access, particularly in the developing world. It takes no votes and makes no decisions but advises bodies that run the internet day-to-day, such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).
The IGF was set up in 2005. At this time, there were several sets of would-be lawmen, all with very different ideas of how the internet should be governed.
Some, such as the US, saw the internet as too fast-moving, amorphous and international to be able to police properly or bureaucratically. Other governments, such as China, disagreed. They recognised the economic benefits of the internet, but wanted to build great firewalls around their countries, which were censored mercilessly.
Many countries, particularly developing nations, were unhappy that the US had so much online clout. They saw Icann, originally set up as an offshoot from the US Department of Commerce, as a tool of western colonialism. They wanted to see it administered by the United Nations in a top-down fashion.
Time for a change
The clash between these various attitudes came to a head at a fractious UN-backed World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in 2005, which was called to deal with the digital divide between the internet-rich and internet-poor countries of the world.
Kofi Annan, then secretary general of the UN, conceded that although the US had exercised its internet oversight "fairly and honourably, a change was necessary" - that is, to spread the governance across the world. However, he made it clear that the UN itself had no desire to "control or police the internet".
Most countries breathed a sigh of relief, because UN bureaucracy would have induced instant paralysis. Nick Thorne, a diplomat at the Tunis summit, said the IGF was devised as "a fix to stop the bad guys controlling the internet". It would also make the internet less-US-centric. All parties accepted this compromise, albeit reluctantly.
The first IGF meeting was in October 2006 in Athens, and the second in November 2007 in Rio de Janeiro. In December this year, it will meet in Hyderabad, India. In Athens, there was much national posturing and grandstanding in the plenary sessions. Not much was achieved. However, at Rio, the 1,600 delegates avoided the plenaries but attended the workshops, which dealt with matters like the sexual abuse of children, the infrastructure of an expanding internet, overcoming digital exclusion, and helping less-developed countries build up their internets.
Malcolm Harbour, a delegate from the European Parliament, found that the best thing to come out of Rio was that people from different countries engaged with one another, and realised that models of competition and structure were not necessarily relevant.
Perhaps because the IGF is a rather British-style compromise, the UK internet community takes it very seriously. The British delegation to Rio was among the largest, and unlike other countries, included several parliamentarians, among them Alun Michael - who, as minister at the DTI, led the UK delegation to the Tunis summit in 2005.
He put forward the idea of forming "dynamic coalitions" of stakeholders from different countries to solve internet problems. In 2007 at Rio, for example, the UK children's charity NCH got in touch with Amnesty International to explore the conflict that sometimes occurs between child protection and free speech.
Michael is beefing up the British contribution to the IGF still further by creating a UK IGF. His aim is to attract a wider set of UK stakeholders - particularly from industry - to work together to make the internet a safer place, and to participate in the Hyderabad forum. To stimulate interest in the forum, the UK internet domain name registry, Nominet, is sponsoring a Best Practice Challenge for UK companies, with an awards ceremony in July. In the autumn, the UK forum will come together to decide on a stance for Hyderabad.
Thinktank
Emily Taylor of Nominet, who sits on the IGF's advisory board, believes that "national IGFs give the opportunity for the grassroots in each country to contribute to what otherwise would be rather rarified and sterile discussions at the annual IGF jamborees". This will turn the IGF from a "talking shop" into a "thinktank".
She wants to attract the people who are "actually doing the internet", to achieve and disseminate practical results before the IGF's five-year term runs out and its work is evaluated. This approach is attracting attention in other countries and Taylor has been invited to present a joint workshop on these local processes with colleagues from Brazil, Finland and France at Hyderabad. The European parliament, which sent five MEPs to Rio, is also supportive.
Taylor believes that the IGF is already having an effect on Icann, and the other bodies involved in the governance of the internet. They are becoming more global, and are using the IGF to get a wider participation in their own processes.
Not everybody agrees with the IGF approach. The US government did send a delegation to Rio, but takes a hands-off free-market attitude to the internet. Its only concern is the infrastructure: to get broadband to as many people as possible.
This is particularly pressing, as estimates show that by 2015, internet traffic will be 50 times what it was in 2006, fuelled by HD video and YouTube. So far, the US government has not pushed anti-spam or anti-pornography legislation. Bizarrely, the only thing it regulates is online gambling.
Recently, there have been arguments in Washington about whether "net neutrality" should be enshrined in law. This debate is concerned with whether ISPs or carriers should be allowed to charge different rates to different customers. And, later this year the US government will complete a review of Icann and e-governance. It will be fascinating to see whether the official American view will become more robust.
Civil libertarians on both sides of the Atlantic criticise the IGF for dealing only with trivia, while avoiding the "big difficult issues" of the internet: openness, free speech, human rights. They forget that the IGF was created specifically to avoid the divisive and intractable debates that threatened to wreck the Tunis summit.
Michael finds it more useful "to take practical cooperative steps rather than a theoretical approach, and that's what will get us away from the traditional conflicts". Very low key, very pragmatic, very British.
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