Governing the Internet: Engaging Government, Business, and Nonprofits

Zoe Baird

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2002

Article preview: first 500 of 2,765 words total.

Summary:  Self-regulation is no longer enough. The future of Internet governance hinges on deploying the strengths of government, business, and nonprofits for the public good.

Zoe Baird is President of the Markle Foundation.

The rapid growth of the Internet has led to a worldwide crisis of governance. In the early years of Internet development, the prevailing view was that government should stay out of Internet governance; market forces and self-regulation would suffice to create order and enforce standards of behavior. But this view has proven inadequate as the Internet has become mainstream. A reliance on markets and self-policing has failed to address adequately the important interests of Internet users such as privacy protection, security, and access to diverse content. And as the number of users has grown worldwide, so have calls for protection of these important public and consumer interests. It is time we accept this emerging reality and recognize the need for a significant role for government on key Internet policy issues.

To do so without stifling innovation will require government to operate in unfamiliar ways, sharing power with experts in the information technology (it) community, with business, and with nonprofit organizations. The first-mover advantage exists in policymaking as well as in business, and some commercial interests are moving as fast as they can to define Internet rules to their benefit without regard for the public interest. To achieve an Internet that reflects a commitment to public good as well as to commercial interests, we have to create more pluralistic models for Internet governance, models in which governments, industry, and nonprofit organizations craft policy -- balancing each other and working together in transparent processes that earn the public's trust.

Many of the initial Internet oversight bodies emphasized self-regulation, bottom-up control, decentralization, and privatization, reflecting a conviction that government would never "get it" or move fast enough to keep pace with technological change. Often, engineers set the standards and industry set the consumer models largely outside of the public eye. As one Internet innovator, John Perry Barlow, wrote in his "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace," "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel . . . On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. . . . You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions."

The loose and creative work of cyberspace pioneers served the Internet superbly as it was being formed and into its early maturation. But now some previously vaunted notions of efficient, private, speedy self-governance are failing to meet expectations. Tensions have arisen over such issues as whether a country has jurisdiction over Internet activities originating in other countries, whether regulation of content such as hate speech and pornography is appropriate, how different privacy protections should apply, and who gets space on prime virtual real estate such as dot-com. In addition, post-September 11 concerns about security in a networked world call into question the wisdom of keeping government off to the shoulder of the information superhighway.

A NEW MODEL OF GOVERNANCE

The reality is that government ...

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