News and Research articles on United Nations (UN)

Facing fragmentation of digital space in the Snowden aftermath, this article considers regulatory models available to avoid the balkanisation of the internet.

Cyber attacks require distributed deterrence involving private and public actors. Can the classics of international law help?

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.’

Datafication (the quantification of social life) is a colonial move which perpetuates a legacy of appropriation. But how to regulate this?

What are the informal arrangements governing online content on platforms in Europe, and what are the factors that make them more or less successful?

How do we construct and deliver data privacy rights? We discuss two recent Australian initiatives on regulation of digital platforms and a new consumer data right.

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

This paper discusses resolution of the contested meanings of inclusiveness, accountability and transparency in trade policymaking.

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.

How has policy reacted to the post-Snowden surveillance discourse in the UK? This paper identifies eight dynamics.

While intermediary liability is becoming an issue of increasing importance in internet governance discussions, little is being made at the institutional level to minimise conflicts across jurisdictions and ensure the compliance of intermediary liability laws with fundamental rights and the freedom to innovate.

The dominant narrative about the governance of the internet in media and with high-level policymakers is misleading. Researchers Francesca Musiani and Julia Pohle explain what stands in the way of genuine multistakeholder internet governance as all eyes are turning towards Brazil and its NETmundial meeting.