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GOVERNANCE OF THE INTERNET

Governance of the Internet Setting technical standards requires the work of technical experts, but involves much wider issues than just technical ones. Standards often entail major political and economic issues. They are a means of protection, domination and exclusion.

Examples of this are:

Internet standards were initially set by small groups of people or often by single individuals. At this time, when neither commerce nor governments paid too much attention to the Internet, the people setting the standards worked within a prevailing Internet culture favouring openness and the consensus of all stakeholders. As they were forced to hand their work over to larger organisations they tried to ensure this policy continued. But times have changed. The rapid expansion of the Internet means new standards are being set that involve major decisions determining the whole direction it will move in. The interests of civil society and of developing countries need to be fought for against the attempts of corporate organisations and the more powerful governments to dominate Internet governance and produce standards that entrench their domination.

There are three major Internet standards bodies:

• Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) This sets the underlying technical standards for the Internet. It describes itself as "a loosely self-organised group of people who make technical and other contributions to the engineering and evolution of the Internet and its technologies." Membership of IETF working groups is open to anyone who chooses to participate via email. These working groups develop technical specifications based on "rough consensus and working code". The Internet Society (ISOC) plays a prominent role in overseeing IETF activities.
  
  The open and democratic nature of the IETF processes has played an important role in creating and preserving an open and democratic Internet, but, in practice, effective participation has been limited to those who have both the time and technical knowledge to contribute. In recent times the IETF has been coming under increasing pressures from commercial organisations complaining that its policy of reaching wide consensus makes it too slow, and from governments and law enforcement agencies wanting to impose legal obligations on it to incorporate such things as wiretapping facilities and traceability of users into its standards.
  
  
• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) This sets standards for the World Wide Web (accessibility, user interface, architecture, etc) through defining such things as HTML specifications. Its structure differs fundamentally from the IETF in that participation is restricted to member organisations willing to pay annual membership fees (minimum $5,000 for non-profit) or to "invited experts". The W3C has maintained relatively open standards, but this has mainly taken place through its domination by one person, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. He has largely succeeded in maintaining his own personal vision of the web as a place for open and free information exchange. It is questionable, however, whether this 'benevolent dictatorship' can be relied upon forever. There are great pressures on W3C to introduce ways of filtering out "harmful" content, which as far as some governments are concerned, certainly includes civil liberties and social justice campaigning material. At the same time, commercial interests and law enforcement bodies are pressing for traceability and the ability to collect private data on users.
  
  
• Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) This was set up to administer the Internet Protocol address space and Domain Name System in 1998. It arose out of a directive from the Clinton government that the responsibility for registering names and numbers should include international participation and be based on consensus. ICANN soon became the target of lobbying from US based civil liberties and consumer interest groups. Under pressure from this lobbying and in line with its original mandate to give representation to all stakeholders, the ICANN Board agreed to the principle of online elections for 9 out of the 18 ICANN Board seats. Anyone could register online as an "at-large member" of ICANN and could then vote in the election. 5 Board members were elected in this way. However, these elections were very controversial within the ICANN Board. A far more restrictive form of at large membership, based on domain name holders,is now being proposed. A section of the ICANN Board wants to go further still and remove at-large representation entirely, substituting representation of governments instead.

APC believes all decision making on Internet standards must be open and accessible and allow participation and scrutiny by all stakeholders, particularly from civil society and from the developing countries.