Warning over ‘broken up’ internet

In a conference organised by Nominet, Nitin Desai “said there were tensions about the future regulation of the net and over specific issues such as international domain names.” He notes there will be marked differences between how the internet is used in the west and developing countries and “the internet was increasingly being shaped by companies and organisations at the “edges” and not by government, public sector bodies and regulators”. Also speaking was Professor Howard Williams (World Bank) who said the debate around future regulation of the web rested on the assumption there would be a single web in the future and that a Balkanisation of the internet was already happening.