Governing the Internet Governing the Internet THE REPRESENTATIVE ON FREEDOM OF THE MEDIA Freedom and Regulation in the OSCE Region www.osce.org/fom The Representative on Organization for Security and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe ISBN 3-9501955-4-8 Co-operation in Europe Freedom of the Media The publisher would like to thank the Governments of France and Germany for their generous support to this publication. The views expressed by the authors in this publication are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. Edited by Christian Möller and Arnaud Amouroux © 2007 The Representative on Freedom of the Media Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Kärtnerring 5-7, Top 14, 2. DG A-1010 Vienna, Austria tel +43-1-512 21 45-0 fax +43-1-512 21 45-9 e-mail [email protected] www.osce.org/fom Design & Layout: Phoenix Design Aid, Denmark ISBN 3-9501955-4-8 CONTENTS Contents 5 Preface 9 Introduction I. Internet Governance 19 The Internet Governance Forum: How a United Nations Summit Produced a New Governance Paradigm for the Internet Age Bertrand de la Chapelle 29 Governing the Domain Name System: An Introduction to Internet Infrastructure Christian Möller 41 The History of Internet Governance Wolfgang Kleinwächter 67 Institutional Aspects of Internet Governance Nico van Eijk and Katerina Maniadaki II. Experiences from the OSCE Region 91 Governance of Hate Speech on the Internet in Europe Yaman Akdeniz 119 Internet Governance in Kazakhstan Rachid Nougmanov 133 Internet Governance in Georgia Ana Dolidze 1 CONTENTS III. The Multi-stakeholder Approach to Internet Governance 147 Protecting Minors on the Internet: An Example from Germany Jennifer Siebert 163 Forum des droits sur l’internet: An Example from France Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin and Laurent Baup 181 The Role of Industry in Internet Development in Latvia Viesturs Pless and Ina Gudele 201 A User Perspective on Spam and Phishing Jon Thorhallsson IV. Biographies 2 OLEG PANFILOV 3 CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS 4 Preface Preface Miklós Haraszti “Internet Governance” is still at a “work-in-progress” stage. It might develop into a new way of policy-making on a global scale involving many different sectors, including not only governments, but also industry and civil society. Whereas standards for previous means of communication were set by intergovernmental organizations, for the Internet this is often done by the online community or expert bodies with an open membership. Technical standards for the emerging networks of the Internet have been set by requests for comments and consensus building. But Internet Governance is not only about technical standards or the Domain Name System. It also has commercial, cultural and social implications, concerning issues like the free flow of information, freedom of expression and freedom of the media online. Recent moves against free speech on the Internet in a number of countries have provided a bitter reminder of the ease with which some regimes — democracies and dictatorships alike — seek to suppress speech that they disapprove of, dislike, or simply fear. Speaking out has never been easier than on the Web. Yet at the same time we are witnessing the spread of Internet censorship. According to research by the OpenNet Initiative, a transatlantic group of academic institutions, censorship is being practised by about two dozen countries and applied to a far wider range of online information and applications. 5 Preface Governments do play an important role in Internet Governance. Although “governance” is not synonymous with “government”, this does not mean that governments should be excluded. Governments have a function that cannot be filled by other actors, for example in guaranteeing an independent judiciary, protecting human rights or establishing antitrust measures. On the other hand there are many fields in which the State should leave governance of the Internet to civil society or the private sector, for example when it comes to the technical functioning, administration, or organization of networks. The freedom dimension of this issue has encouraged the OSCE media freedom Office to take a more detailed look at how the Internet is governed in the OSCE region. In this book the concept of Internet Governance is addressed from a number of different sides and examples from various countries in the OSCE region show how diverse issues of Internet Governance are being tackled by different stakeholders. Reflecting these diverse approaches to Internet Governance is the aim of this publication. I hope that it will contribute in the OSCE region to raising awareness about Internet Governance and its impact on freedom of the media. I would like to warmly thank the Governments of France and Germany for their generous support to the experts’ workshop and to this book. 7 ZVIAD KORDIZE “Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision- making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Working definition of Internet Governance elaborated by the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) in its report of July 2005.1 1 Report of the Working Group on Internet Governance, June 2005 <http://www.wgig.org/docs/WGIGREPORT.doc>. 8 IntrodUction Introduction Arnaud Amouroux and Christian Möller This publication aims to undertake a difficult task, namely to freeze a particular moment in the history of a medium that is changing so quickly and so dramatically. And it can only mirror a certain moment in the ongoing process. The process is called “governance” and the medium is the “Internet”. The moment we seek to capture is important in the development of the Internet as it is the very moment when permanent governing rules for the networked world are being debated, for the first time at the international level and in institutionalized fora. Increasing attention has been paid to the question of whether the Internet, which has developed outside a classic intergovernmental framework, needs governance at all, and, if yes, in what form. Do we need a formal governance structure or will informal means of governance – namely behavioural norms established by the Internet community or by the software code itself – suffice? The disproportionate number of players involved and the myriad of different efforts raise questions about whether the current approach is the best one. According to netdialogue.org, more than a dozen intergovernmental organizations2 are currently deciding rules – without any co-ordination 2 To name a few: Council of Europe (CoE), International Monetary Fund (IMF), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Trade Organization (WTO), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and of course Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). 9 IntrodUction whatsoever – for the networked world in an almost infinite array of fields (property, security, jurisdiction, infrastructure, relations between persons and the State, relations between private parties etc.). Efforts towards more harmonization, rationalization and clarification are exactly what the UN aims to achieve with its Internet Governance Forum (IGF). And whereas television frequencies or phone numbers are governed by national broadcasting authorities or international governmental bodies like the ITU, the Domain Name System (DNS) – which could be best explained as the directory of Internet numbers – is kept by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private company under US law. In the early years of the twenty-first century, Internet Governance naturally started to gain importance and came to the fore at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in two stages under the auspices of the United Nations in Geneva in December 2003 and in Tunis in November 2005. The UN-led Process: Internet Governance Forum The Tunis Agenda for the Information Society invited the UN Secretary- General to convene a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue. This Internet Governance Forum (IGF) process is supported by a Secretariat which is hosted by the United Nations Office in Geneva. The first meeting of the IGF was held in Athens in autumn 2006. Preparation for the 2007 IGF in Rio has already started. Several so-called “Dynamic Coalitions” have been founded. At the price – or advantage – of not being able to adopt binding decisions, the IGF has managed to be very inclusive. The outcome of this process remains open, but the form of the IGF and its organization is definitely a new model of policy-making at the international level. 10 IntrodUction We still do not know whether another institutionalized body addressing all these different aspects of Internet Governance will evolve from the IGF process. Maybe it will instead be an inclusive dialogue and a process of best practices and rough consensus between the different actors. And maybe governments will recognize that not everything needs exact regulation as long as it is functioning smoothly and to everybody’s benefit. The Office of the OSCE Representative participated in the 2006 Athens IGF and, together with other actors, initiated the “Dynamic Coalition on Freedom of Expression and Freedom of the Media Online” (FOEonline)3. This coalition now combines more than a dozen partners, including the Council of Europe and UNESCO as well as NGOs like Amnesty International, Article 19, Reporters sans frontières and IP Justice, as well as academia. These “dynamic coalitions” are endorsed by the Internet Governance Forum, but do not constitute formal entities in any way. Instead, they serve as informal, open and inclusive platforms for state and non-state actors to share their views and contribute to the IGF process.4 They might shape policy-making in the field of Internet Governance, but this still remains to be seen.