The Internet and Global Governance: Principles and Norms for a New Regime (original) (raw)
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The Information Society, 2002
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was created in 1998 to perform technical coordination of the Internet. ICANN also lays the foundations for governance, creating capabilities for promulgating and enforcing global regulations on Internet use. ICANN leverages the capabilities in the Internet domain name system (DNS) to implement four mechanisms of governance: authority, law, sanctions, and jurisdictions. These governance-related features are embodied in seemingly technical features of ICANN’s institutional design. Recognition of ICANN’s governance mechanisms allows us to better understand the Internet’s emerging regulatory regime.
International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET), 2022
The Cyberspace is a borderless space and has led to many legal and jurisprudential problems and challenges for the enactment, enforcement and interpretation of laws. Governance of internet has always been a debated issue around the world. The internet society promotes net neutrality, open access, internet resilience and stability, freedom of expression, privacy and identity of the users. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations and the civil society work together to develop Web standards. The governance structure and processes introduced by IGF provide opportunities to integrate social media ways that enhance both remote and local participation in the yearly forums and throughout the year.
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The term "global governance" gained renewed significance with the expansion of the Internet Governance regime, an arrangement in which most institutions make use of the multistakeholder model to generate norms, with spaces for open dialogue and decision-making that includes most interested actors. This presents a deviation from the model traditionally studied by global governance, which is that of the United Nations and its multitude of agencies, where despite the inclusion of other actors, most of the time States are still at the focal point of the norm-setting process. With a focus on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the main objective of this study is that of understanding where the legitimacy of the actors involved in leading this regime comes from, and in order to do that, we: A) examine the formation of the DNS per se and why it provides a measure of power to the actor that controls it; B) evaluate how legitimacy was established by the actors who took on leading positions within the Internet Governance regime; and C) understand how subsequently the dynamics between State and private actors in this multistakeholder environment were consolidated. We use Weber’s “Three Types of Legitimate Rule” to analyze power dynamics within the model, and conclude that a great deal of power was held by the academics who built the network, and as it became larger and more consolidated, private and government actors have made significant efforts to gain increased control over it, with some degree of success.
Is the ITU or ICANN best positioned to govern the internet.docx
Numbers (ICANN) are in the best position to govern the internet if the opportunity became available. The reasoning behind this interpretation is, as this essay will examine, because the internet is a global domain that cannot be governed completely, especially by one entity. This question will be analysed by examining both of the originations separately, analysing the legitimacy and accountability issues of ICANN and by answering the questions of whether the internet be should be controlled? if so, how do we control it? and who will control it?
2008
A variety of forums have been used to negotiate international regimes for information and communication technologies (ICTs). While much scholarly attention has been paid to ICANN and WSIS, these two forums are not necessarily the most important or authoritative. The G8 and the OECD, for example, are considerably more important overall for ICT regime creation and maintenance. The purpose of this paper to put research on ICT regimes on a sounder footing by surveying the literature and proposing a new agenda for research.
ICANN: Transformation of Approach towards Internet Governance
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Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is one of the world's prior organizations governing the Internet. Since its establishement in 1998 it faced criticism concerning the lack of legitimacy and accountability. ICANN was also challenged because of the ongoing tight relationship with the US government, which was not considered to be acceptable by the rest of the world. The article focuses on the development of ICANN and its approach towards the criticism. It elaborates on the sector-specific issues regarding Internet governance. And finally it informs the reader about the process of transformation of ICANN, which severed the link between the US government and ICANN.
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Demands for a more democratic, transparent and accountable management of the internet were strong when preparing for the World Summit on the Information Society Review (WSIS Review), held in 2015. Partly in response to criticism, the United States initiated a process for transferring responsibility for domain names from the United States to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Increased accountability was among the key motivations for this change. ICANN practices what have subsequently been termed multi-stakeholder governance. This article finds that this form of governance is preferable to an intergovernmental governance model both in terms of transparency and accountability.
Regulation & Governance, 2012
How to generate legitimate forms of governance beyond the nation state is often considered a central question in contemporary world politics. To proceed in theory-building, scholars need to systematically assign the theory-driven assumptions on legitimate forms of governance beyond the nation state with the various, already observable, forms of global governance. This article aims to conduct a comparative appraisal of the legitimatory quality of different patterns of governance by applying a framework of indicators for their assessment. The indicators are selected from the scholarly debate within International Relations on the legitimacy of global governance arrangements and structured by a multidimensional concept of legitimacy (input, throughput, and output dimensions). This framework is then applied to international, transnational, and private forms of global governance in the field of Internet regulation in order to show how each of them tries to produce and maintain legitimacy, which strategies it applies, and in how it interacts with its stakeholders.
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The ICANN, a non-state body, was created by the USA to manage internet name assignments. This move assumed that a transnational civil society of non-state stakeholders existed that was sufficiently developed, balanced, and resilient to undertake this governance role. Policy papers leading to the formation of the ICANN claim a loose consensus that state governance of the internet was inadequate, and that non-state communication, consultation and decisionmaking would more effectively allocate the names or numbers that position users on the internet. Support for non-state governance drew from neo-liberal or public choice arguments that the demand for governance by actors in specific sectors would spontaneously produce the agencies and processes needed in that sector, and from libertarian visions about the ability of market mechanisms to reduce the need for formal governance. Public interest or critical political economy perspectives raise questions about accountability and representation in self-governance by communities of stakeholders.