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Can We Fix the Internet?

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Can We Fix the Internet? Fighting Fake Can We Fix the Internet? As governments around the world have struggled with the coronavirus pandemic, one service has performed with surprising robustness, the Internet. But like so much technology these days we take the Internet for granted — at least until our broadband goes down... And yet problems on and with the system are growing, and there are fears about security. If we want to maintain the many services we currently enjoy / rely on, we are going to have get serious about fixing the underlying architecture — and fight off attempts to Balkanise the Web. Midway through a pandemic may not seem a good time to be asking probing questions about the operation of the Internet, but time is not on our side. In November the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is scheduled to hold a major conference in India, where a delegation from China will make proposals for a new IP and if it (and covert lobbying and arm twisting) are successful, it could be a game-changer. The new protocol may well “support faster broadband” (as China claims), but it will also enable authoritarian regimes around the world to have even more control over their citizens. The primary purpose of this paper is to try to explain the nature of ‘The Problem’ in accessible language.1 But to set this in context I’ve started with a comment on the contribution that the Internet makes to (and takes from) the world economy. 1 What’s the Internet worth? Many brave individuals have tried to estimate the Internet’s economic value. One study (commissioned by the Internet Association) concluded that the ‘internet industry’ in the US was worth around $2.1 trillion — that’s about one tenth of the US’s yearly GDP ($20.5 trillion), or a few percentage points of the Global GDP (which The World Bank put at around $86 trillion in 2018). On this scale the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon are small beer — indeed, the annual revenue of the top 50 internet companies (including these three giants) amounts to a little over one trillion dollars. But that’s not the whole story: the internet is a ‘global commons’ that provides indispensable services to countless businesses, groups and individuals, and it has proved virtually impossible to put a monetary value on this because the Net is so deeply engrained in so many aspects of our lives, from banking and commerce to shopping, mobile communication and online entertainment. As for the cost the Internet’s disbenefits — the economic activity disrupted and lives damaged or lost as a result of the dissemination of lies and disinformation, or trolling, hate speech and organised criminal activity. One study put the economic cost of Internet bad actors (in 2019) at around $80 billion; another, estimated that the cost of cybercrime alone at $600 billion (in 2017) — the figure is likely to be significantly higher today. Whatever the monetised disbenefits (and environmental costs) turn out to be, it is clear that the Internet is not today functioning as its founders had hoped or intended. Far from it. 2 The Internet: Unresolved & Contentious Issues Here are my top Internet conundrums — all are highly contentious! 1 Should the Internet be regulated to reduce misuse, disinformation and criminal activity, and if so how and by whom? 2 Should big tech be broken up to increase competition and encourage innovation, if so, how? 3 How should society weigh the benefits of anonymity and encryption against the social, economic & political costs? 4 Should netizens have rights, including the right to own their data and have protection from prying eyes and surveillance capitalism? 5 Should access to the Internet be a basic human right, and if so, how might this be achieved? 6 What can be done to maintain the Internet as a global resource and prevent its fragmentation? 3 Exploring the Arguments Conundrums, all too often, only have a conjectural answer. But if they are not addressed and sorted out, the underlying problems may well get worse (and cost a lot more to fix). 3.1 Internet Governance & Regulation Conundrum 1: Should the Internet be regulated to reduce misuse, disinformation and criminal activity, and if so how and by whom? The World Economic Forum (WEF) ranks the spread of misinformation and fake news, as among the world’s top global risks. It points out that more than 50% of the world’s population (an estimated 4.1 billion) is now online — with roughly one million more joining each day — and it notes that “the current lack of global technology governance and the presence of cybersecurity blind spots increase the risk of a fragmented cyberspace and competing technology regulations”. The Forum goes on to speculate on how “a fragmented cyberspace and differing technological standards could hinder economic growth, exacerbate geopolitical rivalries and further divide societies.” In 2014 the WEF launched the Global Commission on Internet Governance, which produced a hard-hitting report (in 2016), which argues that “Internet governance is one of the most pressing global public policy issues of our time... To realize its full potential, the Internet of the future will need to be open, secure, trustworthy and accessible to all”.2 Most governments would probably agree that today’s model of Internet governance — essentially, lawless and self-regulation by private, mostly US corporations — is fundamentally broken, and probably concur with The Guardian’s view that censorship is ‘necessary, but not easy'. And if there is to be more coherent regulation, the best option looks like multi-stakeholder3 co-regulation, built around the function or service delivered rather 1 This is a short version of a considerably longer paper, and very much a first draft. Feedback and suggestions most welcome! 2 The Commission’s objective was “to articulate and advance a strategic vision for the future of internet governance.” In its final Report, ‘One Internet’, the Commission outlines three possible futures for the Internet: ‘A Dangerous and Broken Cyberspace’ (the worst scenario); ‘Uneven and Unequal Gains’; and ‘Broad, Unprecedented Progress’, and it put forward key steps that everyone needs to take to achieve an open, secure, trustworthy and inclusive Internet. 3 Governance involving parties from business, government and civil society (including technical experts acting in their individual capacities). Fighting Fake Page: 2 than around geography. This would take account of both economic and human rights considerations. The lack of central oversight may well be the very thing that has allowed Internet companies to transform society and how we communicate, earn a living, and get much of our information and entertainment, but it has also facilitated deep fractures in our social order, caused in large part by the rise of online surveillance and cybercrime, bad actors manipulating public dialogue and undermining social cohesion / democratic government, and the propensity for social media to nudge punters towards more and more extreme content. Fundamental to any discussion of regulation is the 1996 US Communications Decency Act, a landmark piece of legislation, often cited as the most important tool ever created for free speech on the internet. It includes a crucial ‘safe harbour’ provision that gives online platforms legal immunity from most of the content posted by their users.4 In summary, the main arguments5 in favour of regulation are: • there was no formalised regulation of the Internet before it went ‘public’, and neither was any needed. However, today the Internet can be accessed by anyone, including young children, and in these circumstances we must have procedures for tackling illegal content and mechanisms for allowing end-user control of what is accessed. Other electronic communications networks (radio, television & telecommunications) are regulated, and so should the Internet; • the Internet is used for a wide range of nefarious activities, many of which are illegal in most jurisdictions, including copyright theft, credit card fraud, financial scams, money laundering, hacking, industrial espionage, cyber terrorism, prostitution, drug smuggling, suicide assistance, defamatory allegations, cyber stalking etc. Society is entitled to protect itself by enforcing the criminal law just as rigorously as if such activity occurred offline, and this requires regulation. The main arguments against regulation are: • the Internet is different in kind from other communications networks — its genesis fostered a new spirit of freedom, openness and experimentation, and these values should remain an integral feature of the Internet. In a free society any system of controls on internet content represents a breach of the individual’s right to freedom of expression. • the Internet operates in a different way from other communication networks — whereas radio and television is pumped into millions of homes simultaneously (push technology), the Internet is an interactive medium and requires a particular user actively to seek a particular site or application (pull technology), it is just not possible to regulate the Internet even if one wanted to — as John Gilmore once famously quipped: "the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." There are currently (at least) five basic approaches to regulating the Internet.6 These are not mutually exclusive and countries have adopted different combinations of them. Whether in the end effective regulation proves achievable is anyone’s guess: internet ‘misuse’, and ‘disinformation and criminal activity’ mean different things in different cultures or jurisdictions. So unless there is global agreement on what they signify, local forms of regulation may be inevitable.7 3.2 Break Up Big Tech? Conundrum 2: Should big tech be broken up to increase competition and encourage innovation, if so, how? A handful of big tech companies — some digital monopolies — profit most from the current Internet architecture, the so- called FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix & Google) and their Chinese equivalents, Renren (Facebook), JD.com (Amazon), Baidu (Google) and Sina Weibo (Twitter).
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