INTERNET GOVERNANCE

Internet Governance



Internet Governance

Introduction

The Internet is a relatively new and growing aspect of international political-economic affairs. The last 10-15 years have witnessed the frequently controversial emergence and development of a new globalising institutional landscape for Internet governance. An actor keen on expanding its presence on the international political stage, the EU has shown itself keen to develop a prominent position in the international institutional landscape of the Internet (Baird, 2002, 15).

Internet has transformed communication to a degree unimaginable only two decades ago. The number of users of the Internet is difficult to gage. In 1981, there were fewer than 300 computers linked to the Internet, and by 1989, the number stood at fewer than 90,000 computers. By 1993, over 1,000,000 computers were linked. As of 2008, there appears to be some 1.463 billion users of the Internet ranging from about 579 million users in Asia (15.3% of the population), 385 million users in Europe (48.1% of the population), over 248 million in North America (73.6% of the population), almost 42 million in the Middle East (21.3% of the population), and over 51 million in Africa (5.3% of the population). The Internet was created in the U.S. for military purposes to enable military personnel to communicate with each other in a robust and safe environment throughout the many areas of the globe where there was a U.S. military presence. As a result, the U.S. government exercised control over it and in subsequent decades gradually lessened its influence. The Internet having become a worldwide phenomenon, a call for its internationalization and removal from U.S. dominance has taken place. This paper will explore the creation and history of the Internet, a discussion of the current system, and the proposed and subsequent changes that have de facto made the Internet largely independent of U.S. government influence (Baird, 2002, 15).

Impact of the Internet's International Institutional Landscape on the EU

A key aspect of the EU's engagement with the international institutional landscape of the Internet concerns the degree of impact which has occurred on the development of the EU's own perspective on the Internet. Very much an under-researched area of EU Internet policy, a significant finding has been that the degree of impact of an institution and its policies developed at the global level tends to be in part a function of the degree to which the EU has been able to assert itself in the policy context in question: impact is thus a dialectical process. The European Commission has also been a key entity in any processes of policy absorption that the EU has been involved in. On the one hand, it has been able to act as an amplifier of international Internet policy agendas 'domestically'. Through its work in proposing new policy positions and in producing regular assessments of the development of the Internet governance landscape the Commission has functioned as a promoter and an 'educator', internally and externally. On the other hand, the Commission has played a key role as a ...