News and Research articles on International

The invisible politics of Bitcoin: governance crisis of a decentralised infrastructure

Primavera De Filippi, Harvard University
Benjamin Loveluck, Télécom ParisTech (Université Paris-Saclay) and CERSA (CNRS-Paris 2)
PUBLISHED ON: 30 Sep 2016 DOI: 10.14763/2016.3.427

A trustless technology, Bitcoin tries to solve issues of social coordination and economic exchange by relying exclusively on technological means. Is technology alone able to resolve the social and political concerns affecting the Bitcoin network?

Instability and internet design

Sandra Braman, Texas A&M University
PUBLISHED ON: 30 Sep 2016 DOI: 10.14763/2016.3.429

​The history of the internet design process as depicted in the internet RFCs provides evidence of the value of social capital, interpersonal relationships, and community in the face of instability. Drawing conceptual distinctions is a necessary first step for many of the other coping techniques.

The problem of future users: how constructing the DNS shaped internet governance

Steven Malcic, University of California Santa Barbara
PUBLISHED ON: 30 Sep 2016 DOI: 10.14763/2016.3.434

How did early network designers govern the internet before internet governance? With archival research, this article shows how designers conceived of the Domain Name System (DNS) as a solution to the problem of governing future network users.

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.

By retracing the stages of development of a 'peer-to-peer cloud' storage service, Francesca Musiani argues that decentralised network architectures are internet governance 'in practice'.

Open government data emerging, trust in government declining

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten

PUBLISHED ON: 28 Nov 2013

According to the fourth edition of the eGovernment Monitor, released on November 28, the number of users of eGovernment services in Sweden in 2013 was 53 percent, compared to 70 percent in 2012. On average, the decline in all monitored countries was as high as 8 percent.

Network architecture as internet governance

Francesca Musiani, MINES ParisTech
PUBLISHED ON: 24 Oct 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.4.208

Changes in the internet's architectural design affect the repartition of competences and responsibilities between service providers, content producers, users and network operators. This article outlines the dialectic between centralised and distributed architectures, institutions and practices, and how they mutually affect each other.

Of light bulbs and business models: IPv6 as a self-experiment

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten

PUBLISHED ON: 17 Oct 2013

"Did I leave the light on when leaving the house?" 5 kilometres from home, Nathalie Trenaman finds the answer to her question via her mobile phone. In her spare time, she  implemented the IPv6 protocol onto home devices to try to figure out if IPv6 is the driver behind the Internet of Things?