Last week's refusal of civil society organizations to endorse the OECD's Principles for Internet Policy Making was powerful. It killed any pretense that the OECD's call for Internet intermediaries to “assist rights holders in enforcing their rights” has consensual support. But news coverage of that phenomenon has overlooked two other, equally important questions. First, why was this struggle even necessary? The very same battle was fought in Europe only a few years ago and the rights holders lost. Second, why didn't the business interest advisory committee (BIAC) and the Internet Technical Community Advisory Committee (ITAC) join civil society in its dissent?
An official “Scorecard” has been posted in advance of the Feb. 28 showdown in Brussels between the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and the ICANN Board. The “scorecard” is intended to identify the areas where GAC differs from the positions developed by ICANN's supposedly official and open policy development process. Amusingly, the so-called GAC position follows almost verbatim the text submitted as the “US position” back in January. It's clear that the US calls the shots in GAC and other governments, including the EU, make minor modifications to U.S. initiatives. But there is one interesting change. The U.S. has been publicly shamed into backing down a bit from its initial demand for an arbitrary veto over gTLD applications.
Declaring Independence in Cyberspace tells the story of the struggle between governments and the global Internet community over control of the Internet registries (IANA). It offers new insights into a pressing question with profound implications: is state sovereignty the immutable foundation of global governance, or can new technological capabilities change the model?
“This is a book that needed to be written, and no one is better placed to write it than Milton Mueller. This full, rigorous account provides researchers and policymakers with a precious resource on global internet governance.”
Jan Aart Scholte, Leiden University