The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is also part of the UN system; it consists of a small secretariat that facilitates the IGF’s main role as a forum for dialogue. In the IGF, all participants — governments, corporations, academics and non-governmental organizations — have equal status. While it lacks decision-making authority, the IGF has an important role to play in ensuring all voices are heard.
Finally, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) carries out many of the crucial day-to-day tasks that ensure the Internet operates. It administers the Domain Name System (commonly referred to as DNS) and the Internet Protocol address (or IP address) system. Together, these systems act as a phone book for the Internet, ensuring that traffic is routed to the proper destination. Although ICANN has an international board and operates transparently, it is incorporated as a non-profit organization in the United States. Its legal jurisdiction has caused unease in non-Western states and created an appetite for a more genuinely global vehicle for governing the Internet.
The key Internet governance issues — privacy, freedom of speech, intellectual property and security — have created surprising coalitions of strange bedfellows. While industrial democracies attempt to balance legitimate security concerns with critical civil liberties, other states (most notably Russia, China and a coalition of Arab states) are eager to ensure the security of their governing regimes and to correct what they view as a Western stranglehold over existing Internet governance arrangements. Civil society activists advocate for the maintenance of privacy and freedom of speech, but so do increasingly sophisticated transnational criminal organizations that seek to remain in the shadows. Intellectual property concerns unite authors and artists with large corporations, often against civil society activists and the governments of developing states.
Given the array of complex issues, and the diversity of perspectives and interests, it is certain that Internet governance will take shape slowly and fitfully. Success — defined in terms of maintaining the freedom, vitality, security and global interoperability of the Internet — is not assured. The Internet may be made less free by rules curtailing freedom of expression and legitimate expectations of privacy. It also may be made less secure by escalating cyber warfare or by the actions of extremists. Finally, there is a possibility the Internet will fragment, as groups of states and other actors respond to governance deadlock by creating new venues for rule making that result in multiple Internets.
The critical first step is to recognize, and effectively prepare for, the process of rule making that has already begun. Merely showing up is not enough. The rules are made by those who know how the rule-making game is played.
[1] See Bill Woodcock and Vijay Adhikari (2011). “Survey of Characteristics of Internet Carrier Interconnection Agreements.” San Francisco: Packet Clearing House. Available at: http://www.pch.net/docs/papers/peering-survey/PCH-Peering-Survey-2011.pdf.
[2] Rebecca MacKinnon (2012). “The United Nations and the Internet: It’s Complicated,” Foreign Policy, 8 August. Available at: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/08/the_united_nations_and_the_internet_it_s_complicated?page=full.