Exploring Multi-Stakeholder Internet Governance John E. Savage, Brown University Bruce W. McConnell, EastWest Institute January 2015 Exploring Multi-Stakeholder Internet Governance Abstract tered to receive Internet community input through multi-stakeholder consultative pro- Internet governance is now an active topic of cesses. With these changes IG can be made international discussion. Interest has been more comprehensive and manageable while fueled by media attention to cyber crime, protecting its most valuable characteristics. global surveillance, commercial espionage, cyber attacks and threats to critical national Introduction infrastructures. Many nations have decided that they need more control over Internet- Interest in Internet governance (IG) has based technologies and the policies that sup- grown steadily since the creation of the In- port them. Others, emphasizing the positive ternet Corporation for Assigned Names and aspects of these technologies, argue that Numbers (ICANN) in 1998 and is now dis- traditional systems of Internet governance, cussed at many international forums. The which they label “multi-stakeholder” and World Summit on the Information Society which they associate with the success of the (WSIS), held in 2003 and 2005, was a land- Internet, must continue to prevail. mark event. Paragraph 24 of the WSIS out- come document, the 2005 Tunis Agenda In this paper we explain multi-stakeholder In- (WSIS, 2005), contains the following working ternet governance, examine its strengths and definition of IG. weaknesses, and propose steps to improve it. We also provide background on multi-stake- A working definition of Internet gov- holder governance as it has been practiced in ernance is the development and ap- other fields for decades. plication by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their re- Three recommendations are made. First, spective roles, of shared principles, echoing others, we propose simplifying In- norms, rules, decision-making proce- ternet governance (IG) by partitioning it into dures, and programmes that shape issues that can be addressed by existing in- the evolution and use of the Internet. ternational agencies and those that cannot. The latter include naming, routing, security The Secretary General of the UN created the and standards. These are primarily technical Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as an off- EXPLORING MULTI-STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE MULTI-STAKEHOLDER EXPLORING issues but have a policy dimension. Second, shoot of WSIS and has met annually since for bodies handling technical or technically 2006. It provides an important venue for related issues, such as the Internet Corpo- 2 thousands of participants to share ideas on ration for Assigned Names and Numbers Internet governance but has no authority to (ICANN), we recommend adding a multi- make recommendations. stakeholder oversight layer that can accept or reject opinions from these bodies but not In 2013 the leading Internet organizations alter them. Third, existing international agen- met in Montevideo (Akplogan et al., 2013) to cies handling the other issues should be al- warn against “the undermining of the trust Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) are at- and confidence of Internet users globally due tractive because they can provide an alter- to recent (Snowden) revelations of pervasive native between the extremes of laissez-faire monitoring and surveillance.” They also “iden- policies and government regulation by en- tified the need for (an) ongoing effort to ad- abling cooperation between NGOs and cor- dress Internet Governance challenges, and porations in a form of self-regulation. agreed to catalyze community-wide efforts towards the evolution of global multi-stake- Unfortunately, there is no universally ac- holder Internet cooperation.” cepted definition of multi-stakeholder gover- nance. The concept came into use as a vehi- One result of the Montevideo meeting was cle for cooperation in the solution of societal the April 2014 NETmundial: The Global Multi- problems, such as sustainability of natural stakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet resources and protection of workers in the Governance (ICANNWiki, 2014) held in Brazil. developing world. It produced a set of principles and a roadmap for the evolution of the Internet that were en- We now provide a brief history of Internet dorsed by most participants, but not China, governance; report on studies of multi-stake- India, or Russia. They prefer a “UN-led, gov- holder initiatives outside of the Internet; and ernment centric approach to Internet gover- examine the current problematic state of In- nance” (Corwin, 2014). ternet governance (IG), how approaches to it might be simplified, and the possibility of its One NETmundial Internet governance pro- capture by the ITU. Finally, we give a detailed cess principle states “Internet governance breakdown of IG issues and illustrate the sim- should be built on democratic multi-stake- plification of governance by proposing alloca- holder processes, ensuring the meaningful tions of individual issues to authorities. For and accountable participation of all stake- the technical IG issues, we recommend that holders, including governments, the private if a political layer be attached to an existing INTERNET GOVERNANCE MULTI-STAKEHOLDER EXPLORING sector, civil society, the technical community, body, such as ICANN, that it protects techni- the academic community and users.” cal judgments from modification by the politi- cal layer. For non-technical IG issues, we rec- The multi-stakeholder model is now widely ommend the addition of a multi-stakeholder touted as the Internet governance model of component to international bodies that take choice. The White House endorsed it in its responsibility for an IG issue. 2011 International Strategy for Cyberspace, as did both houses of the U.S. Congress in late 2012. ICANN describes itself as multi- Brief History of Internet stakeholder (ICANNWiki, 2014) while the In- Governance ternational Telecommunications Union (ITU) says in a backgrounder document published The Internet evolved from a packet-based for the 2013 World Telecommunications communications research project funded by Policy Forum (WTPF), “Through its Plenipo- the (Defense) Advanced Research Projects tentiary Resolutions, the ITU membership Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of recognizes the multi-stakeholder governance Defense. DARPA-funded research projects model based on the WSIS principles as the in universities and research laboratories pro- framework for global Internet governance” duced a new set of communication protocols (“Supporting Multi-stakeholderism in Inter- for the interconnection of networks. Once the net Governance,” 2013). protocols emerged, a large variety of new ap- plications emerged, thereby stimulating the Given the prominence that multi-stakeholder growth of a new industry. Internet governance has assumed, it is impor- tant to understand what the concept means, The original DARPA research project was explore its strengths and weaknesses, and very popular; computer science departments understand how best to implement it. It is and research organizations clamored to be 3 imprudent for the world community to adopt connected to the new network. Research on this form of governance of a global resource packet-based networking flourished as a re- as important as the Internet without first hav- sult. By the early 1980s, the transition began ing a solid understanding of these issues. from a research network to an operational one. At that point, DARPA allowed the Inter- net community to develop network technolo- stitutes the communication protocols as well gies on its own via a new non-governmental as the hardware, software, applications, the entity known today as the Internet Engineer- local networks, the security of the compo- ing Task Force (IETF). nents and the system, the supply chain, and the legal, policy and political dimensions of The creation of Internet technologies has the above. been done largely in a multi-stakeholder fashion. Both the IETF and the World-Wide It follows from this description that the Inter- Web Consortium (W3C), which produces net governance domain is very complex and web protocols and standards, are of this kind. has many players. What is remarkable is that, They operate in an open and transparent despite its size and complexity, it is reliably manner. All interested parties are invited to serving a population estimated at more than participate. However, to be a credible partici- three billion users. In light of this, attempts pant requires in-depth knowledge of the tech- to replace important parts of the current nologies in question. governance system must be done with great care. Another conclusion is that the Internet The IETF has created an informal but well- domain is likely too complex to be managed articulated system to guide its work (2014). by one organization. It functions well because Its recommendations are recorded in thou- of the expertise that is distributed among the sands of documents called Request for Com- many players. ments (RFCs) in honor of the first report by Steve Crocker (Crocker, 1969). One of these documents, RFC 7154, explains the IETF code What is Multi-Stakeholder of conduct, namely, that participants are ex- Internet Governance? pected to show respect and courtesy to one another, have impersonal discussions, come The term multi-stakeholder governance prepared to contribute, and work together to (MSG) came into use in