Facing fragmentation of digital space in the Snowden aftermath, this article considers regulatory models available to avoid the balkanisation of the internet.
News and Research articles on Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
This article looks at the basis for use- or content-related takedown of domain names in the terms of services of 30 European country-code top-level domain names.
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?
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.’
Operationalisation of communication rights in the context of Finland highlights major challenges that digitalisation poses to democracy.
Introduction
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.
This paper discusses resolution of the contested meanings of inclusiveness, accountability and transparency in trade policymaking.
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.
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.
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.
Internet governance bodies agree that improving online security is important, but disagree on what a more secure internet would look like.
This special issue calls to rethink how we conceptualise both internet and governance.
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.
One multi-stakeholder process is not like another, but how can we distinguish those that promote meaningful inclusion from those that don't?
This article revisits the multistakeholder approach to internet policymaking and makes a case for a new model recognising the heterogeneity of stakeholders’ interests.
"The legal systems in both the United States and in the European Union member states are simply not cut out for citizen-driven, peer-to-peer communication," argues Swedish Pirate Party member Amelia Anderdotter.