The war in Ukraine has not only created untold suffering for multitudes and the greatest crises in international peace and security in decades. It also has potentially serious consequences for the future of the global internet as we know it, and a large international meeting set for 2025 might prove decisive.
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum to hold weekly public online sessions as from 22 June, culminating in September with a final week of interactive high-level dialogues, WSIS Prizes ceremony and more
Abstract: Since the late 1990s, the Chinese government has engaged in a process of attempting to reform the technical global internet governance regime, which is currently dominated by the US government and non-state actors.This article aims to contribute to the literature on Beijing’s approach to this issue by providing a detailed empirical account of its involvement in a few core regime organisations.It argues that Beijing’s reform approach is guided by its domestically derived preferences for strong state authority and expanding China’s global power, but that its reform efforts are unlikely to succeed based on countervailing structural hard- and soft-power factors.This paper is available from the Social Science Research Network website at:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2532336
Abstract: 2013 marks the tenth anniversary of the United Nationsâ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Although neither a forum focussed exclusively on âInternet governanceâ nor the first discussion of the topic, WSIS marked the start of a global, decade-long debate on how the Internet is, and should be, managed.
A decade later, the Internet has grown exponentially, bringing about massive cultural, social and economic change. And yet, many of the political and policy issues around its governance largely remain the same and are regularly debated in a wide range of fora. This article draws upon historical experiences in the Internet governance debate to explain and assess current discussions and to cast a wary eye into the future.
This article by Chris Disspain, CEO, .au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA) and ICANN Board Director and Paul Szyndler, General Manager, International and Government Affairs, auDA is available for download in full in the June 2013 edition of the Telecommunications Journal of Australia at telsoc.org/journal/2013-06/navigating_multi-stakeholder_morass_past_present_future_internet_governance
ICANN’s mentions in the Wikileaks cables is investigated by Milton Mueller on the Internet Governance Project blog. In their searches, the terms copyright, Internet, ICANN and cybersecurity were all searched for.Mueller notes that “Regarding ICANN, the leaked cables are from the foreign policy branches rather than the Commerce Department, so most of the juicy ICANN-related stuff is not in there. Searching for ‘ICANN’ produces 39 documents, all but two of them unclassified. Some of the most interesting date back to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the debate it sparked over US control of the root.”To read Mueller’s analysis of the cables regarding ICANN as well as copyright, internet and cybersecurity, see:
blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/9/1/4890935.html
Abstract: In 1998, ICANN started placing a high emphasis on the private sector-oriented decision-making process. The UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 initially kicked off as a traditional government-oriented decision-making forum in 2003, and it concluded that the future global negotiation will be operated in a multi-stakeholder environment in 2005. However, the nation states from the South failed to understand the emerging rules of the multi-stakeholder principle pushed by the North until now. The culture of working together with non-state actors as decision makers in the South, including many Asian countries, is still foreign to state actors. Consequently, they could not be effectively engaged with the global negotiations on Internet Governance.
Those who have adapted to this new global negotiation environment could gain more negotiating power promptly by inviting the private sector and civil society into both national and global regulatory frameworks, while those who have resisted to implementing the multi-stakeholder principle encountered limitations in influencing the multi-layer global negotiation. This results in the reality that the North wins over the South by working with like-minded private sector and civil society actors in establishing an ICT policy regulatory framework that disempowers the South. Participation and observation in the field including ICANN and the UN Internet Governance Forum is the main methodology in conducting this study. The findings of this study will illuminate the lessons the Asia region should learn to become effective negotiators in global negotiations on Internet Governance.
To download this article from the 4th Communication Policy Research, South Conference, Negombo, Sri Lanka, on the Social Science Research Network in full, see:
ssrn.com/abstract=1554228