Internet governance, international trade, and the future of the web

Today in Dubai a meeting will be held that may, in part, shape the direction of the internet in the future.  While we all take for granted now that it's just "there," in actuality the protocols and standards for the internet are governed and directed by policymakers in the U.S. and around the world. 

This article in the Economist lays out the situation quite well:

"THE rules of the internet decide its speed, safety, accessibility, flexibility and unity. They therefore matter not just to computer enthusiasts, but to everyone with a stake in the modern world. On December 3rd officials from more than 150 countries, plus do-gooders, geeks and other interested parties, will meet in Dubai to argue about how to run the network—and fight over who should control it.

Since the internet’s creation, a ragtag bunch of academics, engineers, firms and non-profit outfits have been in charge. That delights innovators but has been a nightmare for the tidy-minded, and especially for authoritarian governments. They would like the net to be run like the world’s telephone system, with tight standards and clearly set charges. The Dubai meeting brings the chance to write new rules, with a review of an elderly treaty: the International Telecommunication Regulations."

There are a number of things at stake and many of them are viewed very differently by different nations and stakeholders. The Economist goes on to say:

"America, the European Union and other Western countries are trying to defend the chaotic status quo. Against them are Russia, China and many African and Arab states which claim that the internet undermines national laws while enriching American firms. The meeting’s host is the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a sluggish UN affiliate founded in 1865 to regulate telegrams, but which now deals with satellite flight-paths and radio frequencies. Its influence has waned since telecoms liberalisation."

Among the things controlled in the U.S. is the internet address system of Domain Names and IP addresses itself, run by a California organization called ICANN.  Some of the key issues for the future of the internet include things like online piracy issues as well as how infrastructure costs are handled in the developing world. Issues of privacy and censorship are central to complaints of many countries, particularly those with more authoritative governments which would like the ability to limit what their citizens can say and see on the internet. 

In addition, the debate over Net Neutrality and whether service providers should be able to charge differently for access to different sites is a major issue. Net Neutrality rules would require operators to grant equal priority to all internet traffic, and prevent them from charging higher prices for “fast lanes” and other premium services - the graphic above depicts what it would look like if your internet service was sold to you like your cable or satellite tv service. 

Many would find this approach objectionable but the service providers argue that things like video streaming which eat up higher bandwidth should be charged for accordingly, and that it's inefficient to charge the same price to someone checking their mail vs. someone streaming HD video.  While this seems reasonable, a bigger issue is that if you got your internet through TimeWarner, they could make access to their content (CNN, TNT, HBO, etc) more readily available than other content and the openness of the web could disappear. 

The fear is that we could end up with a situation where, for example, AT&T formed an agreement with Google and Disney and Verizon, Microsoft Bing, and NBC formed another agreement - pretty soon we have silos of content and vertical mergers and the entire landscape of the internet has changed. 

An equally interesting issue from a global development standpoint is the question of infrastructure costs and North-South trade.  Again, from the Economist:

"A fiercer row is brewing about the rules for online businesses. High charges for international phone calls once helped funnel cash from rich countries to state-owned networks in developing ones. Much of that traffic is now on the internet, hitting national operators’ profits—and governments’ foreign-exchange reserves. An alliance of poor countries and network operators wants businesses that depend on broadband networks, such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft, to pay towards their construction and upkeep.

One proposal is that the most popular websites, such as YouTube or Facebook, should be billed for the data they send, as if they were making phone calls. At the moment an American web firm pays no more to serve data to customers in Dhaka than in Detroit. But if the cost of serving users varied by location, web firms might start to shun far-flung customers, says Karen Mulberry of the Internet Society, which represents the network’s engineers. " 

As more and more of our economies are shifting to be knowledge-based or otherwise dependent on the web we are going to increasingly be asked to come to grips with questions of open access vs. regulation and what to do when knowledge crosses international borders.  A shipping container in most cases can be reasonably held in customs, taxed, inspected, etc when it enters a country.  Whether we can or should do similar things to digital information is a question yet to be definitively answered.

I find these to be really interesting and important questions for the next 25 years of global trade and development.  We are struggling to make sense of a new and rapidly changing world and often trying to deal with it in the context of 200 year old interstate commerce clauses, patent and copyright laws, and treaties and trade agreements dating back to telegraph regulations.  The direction we take with new laws such as Net Neutrality, SOPA, and any number of privacy questions will be very important and provide a lot of interesting topics for social science study in all our disciplines.

Source: The Economist