News and Research articles on Internet Governance Forum (IGF)

Management of the internet by the principle of the multistakeholder governance model has survived attempts of replacing it with inter-government management. What additional principles are useful to guide global internet governance and enhance ICANN’s legitimacy, seen in light of recent challenges? Are the disagreements over global internet governance also about diverging understandings of the goals in internet governance?

Zombie contracts, dark patterns of design, and ‘documentisation’

Kristin B. Cornelius, University of California, Los Angeles
PUBLISHED ON: 30 Jun 2019 DOI: 10.14763/2019.2.1412

Standard form consumer contracts (SFCCs), including Terms of Service agreements, are drafted by businesses and presented to consumers on a non-negotiable basis. Since these contracts present an asymmetric imbalance of information and resources between parties, they have been of concern for consumer rights in recent years. While some have characterized these issues as a ‘duty to read’ for consumers or as egregious terms and weak disclosures by drafters,’ this project suggests at least part of the issues exist from a lack of consideration of the document itself (i.e., medium, format, authenticy, reliability, stability) and the processes that deem it ‘standard.’

Operationalising communication rights: the case of a “digital welfare state”

Marko Ala-Fossi, Tampere University
Anette Alén-Savikko, University of Helsinki
Jockum Hildén, University of Helsinki
Minna Aslama Horowitz, University of Helsinki
Johanna Jääsaari, University of Helsinki
Kari Karppinen, University of Helsinki
Katja Lehtisaari, University of Helsinki
Hannu Nieminen, University of Helsinki
PUBLISHED ON: 31 Mar 2019 DOI: 10.14763/2019.1.1389

Operationalisation of communication rights in the context of Finland highlights major challenges that digitalisation poses to democracy.

Standard form contracts and a smart contract future

Kristin B. Cornelius, University of California, Los Angeles
PUBLISHED ON: 15 May 2018 DOI: 10.14763/2018.2.790

With widespread smart contract implementation on the horizon, there is much conversation about how to regulate this new technology. Noting the failure of contract law to address the inequities of standardised contracts in the digital environment can help prevent them from being codified further into smart contracts.

Accountability challenges confronting cyberspace governance

Jacqueline Eggenschwiler, University of Oxford
PUBLISHED ON: 20 Sep 2017 DOI: 10.14763/2017.3.712

Cyberspace governance struggles with three accountability challenges, the problem of many hands, the profusion of issue areas, as well as the hybridity and malleability of institutional arrangements. In order to address and mitigate these challenges, accountability relationships need to be consciously reframed and discursively constructed.

Private ordering and the rise of terms of service as cyber-regulation

Luca Belli, Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School
Jamila Venturini, Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School
PUBLISHED ON: 29 Dec 2016 DOI: 10.14763/2016.4.441

Internet intermediaries unilaterally define their terms of service (ToS) and enforce them privately by shaping the architectures of the networks and platforms under their control. Based on empirical evidence, Belli and Venturini argue that ToS and their implementation affect users’ rights.

Multistakeholder governance processes as production sites: enhanced cooperation "in the making"

Julia Pohle, Berlin Social Science Center (WZB)
PUBLISHED ON: 30 Sep 2016 DOI: 10.14763/2016.3.432

Through a combination of actor-network theory and interpretative policy analysis, multistakeholder arrangements in internet governance are conceptualised as sites of discursive production in which heterogeneous actors engage in dynamic processes of social ordering.

Doing internet governance: practices, controversies, infrastructures, and institutions

Dmitry Epstein, University of Illinois at Chicago
Christian Katzenbach, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG)
Francesca Musiani, Université Paris-Sorbonne
PUBLISHED ON: 30 Sep 2016 DOI: 10.14763/2016.3.435

This special issue calls to rethink how we conceptualise both internet and governance.

Multilevel constitutionalism and e-democracy

Ingolf Pernice, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

PUBLISHED ON: 4 May 2016

As a scholar of constitutional law, of European and international law, having along the way gathered some knowledge of the workings of the internet, I am happy to present some perhaps somewhat revolutionary thoughts about governing in the future. The issue I was asked to deal with was: Governing the 21st century. Here are my thoughts about it.