How is the Internet governance organized?

Dit is deel 2 in een reeks artikelen over de Masterclass Netpolitiek 2022.

In the second meeting of the Masterclass Netpolitics researcher Niels ten Oever took us by the hand in an exploration of the history and governance of the internet. The common thread in his work is 'to make the invisible visible': to show how hidden infrastructures organize society on a technical and social level and thus influence the distribution of wealth, power and opportunities.

The internet is basically a collection of standards. Standards are formally established agreements, sometimes with an age-old history, such as coin systems and weights. Behind standardization are economic interests (being able to trade easily and guarantee quality) and/or political interests (to maintain or recruit power, to secure safety). The emergence of the internet was also politically driven. The ARPANET, forerunner of the Internet, was an initiative of the U.S. Department of Defense in response to the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. By connecting computer networks ('inter-networking'), researchers working on military projects were able to exchange knowledge more easily.

In the first decades, the internet was mainly used by scientists and was not publicly available. In the late eighties, the U.S. pulled its hands off the internet and privatization started. A game changer in the same period was the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners Lee: the number of users increased by leaps and bounds. This growth was also the beginning of the far-reaching commercialization of the internet, with the important pillars of advertising sales and user data collection. Nowadays, the internet has approx. 5 billion users, a small number of Big Tech companies dominate the online advertising market and scandals and abuses pile up (such as the election manipulation by Facebook, surveillance by the NSA, internet censorship by Chinese, Iranian and Russian governments, etc.).

Many internet pioneers such as Tim Berners Lee are very concerned about this development. Fundamental human rights, such as the right to privacy, freedom of expression and access to information, appear to be insufficiently guaranteed. Tim Berners Lee therefore argues for a transition to a decentralized internet, Web 3.0, in which users regain control over their data. However, intervention is difficult, because the internet traditionally has no central government, but a so-called 'multi-stakeholder governance model'. Various parties, from technical and political bodies, national and international supervisory authorities, research and knowledge institutions to network operators, jointly decide (and fight) on the management and further development of the internet.

Internet standards are developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). This is an independent, international community of network specialists, operators, suppliers and researchers. In dozens of groups, participants work on a voluntary basis on so-called Request for Comments (RFCs): technical specifications and organizational notes for the internet. The basis for decision-making is so-called ‘rough consensus’; there is no official voting procedure. Although the IETF is in principle open to participants who are not tied to a specific company, in practice it is dominated by the (Western) industry. The table with an overview of the binding nature of authors of RFCs gives an impression of which companies put a heavy stamp. The focus in RFCs is mainly on technical aspects (such as connectivity) and less on ethical aspects (such as privacy).

It was once expected that the internet would bring access and freedom to users worldwide thanks to decentralized governance. But in reality, this control is at the expense of an important public good. In his report appropriately titled ‘Human rights are not a bug: Upgrading Governance for an Equitable Internet' Niels ten Oever makes several recommendations to anchor the public interest and human rights in the governance of the internet. Think of the application of 'human rights impact assessments' in the development of policy and technology; better, representative representation of regions, businesses and citizens in governance organisations and a greater role for civil society.

I think Niels ten Oever's advice requires a radical cultural change, because an organisation like the IETF avoids 'policy questions'. But everyone can contribute to change, because participation in the IETF is open to all interested parties. For a light-hearted example of a protocol, take a look at RFC 2324 :-)