ABSTRACT: WHO SHOULD GOVERN THE INTERNET?

Andrew Updegrove

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2004)

In its first decade, the creation of the Internet and the World Wide Web were solely the province of consortia, their institutional members, and individual engineers. But after ten years, these new tools had not only become vitally important to a bewildering number of aspects of modern life, but their potential to change the lives and future of those in the third world became equally evident. As a result, in late 2001 the United Nations convened a multi-year effort called the "World Summit on the Information Society." One of the yet to be completed questions the WSIS has charged itself with answering is the important query, "Who should govern the Internet?" Besides the importance of that question generally lie concerns over whether societal and technical priorities will be properly balanced. In this article, the author reviews the specific text of the WSIS "Plan of Action" for indications of how the United Nations and the WSIS participants believe these questions should be answered.