Bevil Wood­ing

The open­ness of the In­ter­net has been a cat­a­lyst for many of the so­cial and eco­nom­ic ad­vances of the past two decades. It has fa­cil­i­tat­ed a lev­el of hu­man com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in­ter­con­nec­tion un­prece­dent­ed in hu­man his­to­ry. The stag­ger­ing glob­al pop­u­lar­i­ty of so­cial net­work­ing sites like Face­book and YouTube are tes­ta­ment to this. It has al­so spurred new lev­el of in­no­va­tion that has fu­elled sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. The McK­in­sey Glob­al In­sti­tute, a US-based think-tank, es­ti­mates that in de­vel­oped coun­tries the In­ter­net has gen­er­at­ed as much as 10% of GDP growth over the past 15 years.

The im­pres­sive growth of the In­ter­net has not been with­out chal­lenges. The struc­tures nec­es­sary to over­see such a dy­nam­ic crea­ture as the In­ter­net have to con­tin­u­al­ly adapt to a shift­ing set of glob­al pri­or­i­ties and pres­sures. Fur­ther, In­ter­net-en­abled eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits, and the pow­er and in­flu­ence that goes with it, have not al­ways been chan­neled to de­vel­op­ing na­tions.

Man­ag­ing Chaos – the Mul­ti-stake­hold­er Ap­proach

An­swer­ing the ques­tions of who is re­spon­si­ble for ad­dress­ing eq­ui­ty and growth of the In­ter­net, and who is to be charged with cre­at­ing and gov­ern­ing a more even play­ing field is rather com­pli­cat­ed. No sin­gle or­ga­ni­za­tion or coun­try is re­spon­si­ble for gov­ern­ing the In­ter­net. In­stead, the In­ter­net is man­aged by a m&ea­cute;lange of or­gan­i­sa­tions, rep­re­sent­ing a va­ri­ety of in­ter­ests and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

De­spite the glob­al sig­nif­i­cance of their func­tion, the in­sti­tu­tions cur­rent­ly charged with ad­min­is­ter­ing the in­sti­tu­tions are large­ly un­her­ald­ed and un­known. On­ly a minis­cule per­cent­age of bil­lions of peo­ple who de­pend on the In­ter­net have ever heard of the In­ter­net Cor­po­ra­tion for As­signed Names and Num­bers (ICANN), a U.S.-based non­prof­it re­spon­si­ble for co­or­di­nat­ing the glob­al do­main-name sys­tem; the col­lec­tion of re­gion­al In­ter­net reg­istries such as the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean In­ter­net Ad­dress­es Reg­istry (LAC­NIC) and Amer­i­can Reg­istry for In­ter­net Num­bers (ARIN), that co­or­di­nate IP ad­dress­es; the In­ter­net As­signed Num­bers Au­thor­i­ty (IANA), the cen­tral co­or­di­na­tor for the de­vel­op­ment and pro­mo­tion In­ter­net stan­dards In­ter­net pro­to­cols; or the In­ter­net En­gi­neer­ing Task Force (IETF), which de­vel­ops glob­al tech­ni­cal stan­dards so that de­vices and soft­ware can in­ter­op­er­ate. Many of their meet­ings are open to the gen­er­al pub­lic and of­fer both on­line and of­fline ac­cess, as well as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute, to any­one will­ing to par­tic­i­pate. The list of three and four-let­ter acronymed groups gets even more ob­scure when one adds the many oth­er or­ga­ni­za­tions and stake­hold­er groups that co­or­di­nate In­ter­net-re­lat­ed re­sources, stan­dards and pol­i­cy.

It is no sur­prise that many on­look­ers view this mul­ti-stake­hold­er ap­proach to In­ter­net gov­er­nance chaot­ic and in­ef­fi­cient. Some ar­gue that the In­ter­net is sim­ply too im­por­tant glob­al­ly to be left to such a loose mod­el of gov­er­nance. How­ev­er, his­to­ry, the facts and the fruits of an open In­ter­net ar­gue oth­er­wise. The seem­ing­ly loose, de­cen­tral­ized, mul­ti-stake­hold­er gov­er­nance mod­el has worked amaz­ing­ly well in man­ag­ing the ex­po­nen­tial growth of the In­ter­net. Pro­po­nents of this mod­el be­lieve that is be­cause the sys­tem is so open and de­cen­tral­ized that po­ten­tial­ly any­one, any­where on the plan­et can in­vent new ap­pli­ca­tions, de­vel­op con­tent or tech­nol­o­gy and in­ter­con­nect it with the glob­al net­work.

In­ter­net Gov­er­nance Un­der Threat

Yet, all is not well. The stakes are high in the grow­ing glob­al de­bate on who should be in charge of the In­ter­net. For years Chi­na, In­dia, Rus­sia and many de­vel­op­ing coun­tries have protest­ed that the mul­ti-stake­hold­er in­sti­tu­tions are un­fair­ly dom­i­nat­ed by Amer­i­cans and West­ern Eu­ro­peans. De­vel­op­ing coun­tries, of­ten un­der or un-rep­re­sent­ed at In­ter­na­tion­al gath­er­ings, voice re­al con­cerns that rich­er, de­vel­oped na­tions ma­nip­u­late out­comes to fur­ther their own com­mer­cial and geopo­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage.

Against this back­drop, a new bat­tle in the war for con­trol of the In­ter­net has be­gun. At its cen­tre is the In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (ITU), a Unit­ed Na­tions or­ga­ni­za­tion cov­er­ing 193 mem­ber coun­tries. The ITU, whose re­mit thus far has been lim­it­ed to glob­al tele­phone sys­tems, is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a re­view of the in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments gov­ern­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. The body is propos­ing to ex­pand its reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ty to the In­ter­net at a sum­mit called the World Con­fer­ence on In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions (WC­IT) sched­uled for De­cem­ber 2012 in Dubai.

The ITU is a mod­el ex­am­ple of an in­ter­na­tion­al bu­reau­cra­cy whose pon­der­ous, top-down ap­proach to de­ci­sion-mak­ing could hard­ly be more an­ti­thet­i­cal to the In­ter­net's dy­nam­ic, bot­tom-up ap­proach to gov­er­nance. As a UN treaty-based or­ga­ni­za­tion, if the ITU's pro­pos­als were to be passed in Dubai, it would bind mem­ber coun­tries to an In­ter­net Gov­er­nance mod­el that is es­sen­tial­ly dic­tat­ed and con­trolled by gov­ern­ments. More fun­da­men­tal­ly it could ham­string de­ci­sion-mak­ing and con­strain the pace of growth and de­vel­op­ment on the In­ter­net.

Such a move would rep­re­sent a tec­ton­ic shift in the philo­soph­i­cal foun­da­tions of the In­ter­net. It would al­so like­ly have pro­found and per­ilous ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the fu­ture of the In­ter­net and its glob­al users.

De­fend the Val­ues, Pro­tect the In­ter­net

The role gov­ern­ments have played in al­low­ing the In­ter­net to grow or­gan­i­cal­ly has been a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in its suc­cess. But the mul­ti-stake­hold­er ap­proach to de­vel­op­ment, op­er­a­tion and gov­er­nance has been an equal­ly im­por­tant com­ple­ment. There is room for im­prove­ment in the cur­rent mod­el of In­ter­net gov­er­nance; how­ev­er, aban­don­ing the prin­ci­ples and val­ues that have led to In­ter­net's suc­cess as a glob­al plat­form for in­no­va­tion and de­vel­op­ment is not the an­swer.

Coun­tries around the world, but par­tic­u­lar­ly those in de­vel­op­ing re­gions, need to crit­i­cal­ly ex­am­ine pros and cons of move by ITU and the po­si­tion of glob­al In­ter­net Gov­er­nance or­ga­ni­za­tions. Too much is at stake for any­one to re­main ig­no­rant of the is­sues, or worse, silent in re­sponse.

Bevil Wood­ing is an In­ter­net Strate­gist with Pack­et Clear­ing House, a US-based re­search non-prof­it, and Chief Knowl­edge Of­fi­cer of Con­gress WBN, a glob­al non-prof­it fo­cused on val­ues-based na­tions de­vel­op­ment. Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing and Face­book: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing or email tech­nol­o­gy­mat­ters@bright­path­foun­da­tion.org