DQ2 - GOVERNANCE

Internet is not a physical entity its a network of networks. But not just any
network but hundreds and thousands of networks interconnected linking
billions of computers around the world. Therefore internet comprises of
infrastructure and networks which is largely owned and operated by private
sector entities international and decentralized. At this scenario it is a very
important question that who will govern this everyday growing entity.
An important aspect of internet if controlled by private sector international
cooperation called the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers). The critical technical underpinning of IP address and Domain names
are managed by ICANN. The policy decision is governed by a multistakeholder
model in which a combined process is exposed to all internet stakeholder
constituencies (Kruger, 2013).
Recently there has been increasing stake in ICANN decisions on policy, mainly in
areas where the national laws intersects with internet policy causing issues in
areas such as intellectual property, law enforcement, privacy and cybersecurity.
With regards to how the internet has to be governed, many countries have been
advocating increased intergovernmental influences. Many proposals has been
raised before in order to create an entity within UN to govern the internet. But
internet stakeholders and countries like US have been arguing that
multistakeholder model like ICANN which still needs improvement is a better and
appropriate way of internet governance.
Until March 2014, NTIA (National Telecommunication an Information
Administration) enjoyed the power over ICANN greatly by its relationship with
domain system and internet. But today they intend to transition the key internet
domain functions to global multistakeholder community. The administration has
asked to develop a proposal that would give an international body more control
than the NTIA. The issue is that most of the people are still not aware regarding
what these organisations are (Abraham, 2014).
Therefore, does NTIA and ICANN really controls the internet?
Because the NTIA is only and agency within the commerce department that
promotes broadband expansion policies and advising the President on
information and telecommunication policy issues. Along with these duties they
also carry out contract with ICANN for monitoring and gives power to speak on
behalf of the US government. Same way ICANN does the job of allocating unique
identity numbers and names that makes the internet a better place to use. This
still doesnt give any power to ICANN in terms of internet control. It cannot bring
any site down and cannot regulate any type of contents thats in the website. So,
when we look at the control factor ICANN has very less power compared to
FBI or the company that provides servers to host websites (Russell, 2014).
So in conclusion, the question who controls or govern the internet is not really a
beneficial question as nobody controls the internet per se. The internet is a broad
area of technologies, standards, geographies and services. The private sector,
government, technical community, academic community, civil society etc. are of
variant governance regimes.

Does the fact that US is giving away control make China and Russia more
powerful?

References:
Abraham, S . (2014). Who Governs the Internet? Implications for Freedom and
National Security. Available: http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/yojanaapril-2014-sunil-abraham-who-governs-the-internet-implications-for-freedomand-national-security. Last accessed 13th April 2014.
Kruger, L . (2013). Internet Governance and the Domain Name System. Available:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42351.pdf. Last accessed 13th April 2014.
Russell, K. (2014). No, The US Didn't Just Give Up Control Of The Internet Read
more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ntia-icann-and-us-control-of-the-internet2014-3#ixzz2ynTuwkcm. Available: http://www.businessinsider.com/ntia-icannand-us-control-of-the-internet-2014-3. Last accessed 13th April 2014.