Return to the present day (to break away from it better...)

For many commentators, the WSIS project grows out of an ideological vision - "cyberdemocracy" - born in the Internet euphoria of the 1990s, but nowadays obsolete. To these commentators, the relative "banalization" of the Internet forced the key players to leave their "bubble" and return to the reality of market forces. Once again, the utopia did not take root. The Vox Internet seminar has aimed at developing an approach based on analysis of the "real" Internet with respect to its promises.

Like preceding UN summits, the Geneva session of the WSIS brought to light a dual institutional problem. On one hand, the managerial capacities of States are limited at a time when capital and data are transferred across borders instantly, as this capital and data flow occurs without governmental oversight inside a broadly distributed technical organization that governments can hardly get hold of. On the other hand, there is a political difficulty in imagining new systems for "living together better." The challenge of Internet governance, as interpreted by public and private players, is emblematic in this respect:

On one hand, content regulation raises difficult questions in terms of public policy, going beyond the foundations of criminal law and civil law: at a time when families surf the web together and when citizens’ daily actions (administration, commerce, social relations) assume an electronic form, confidence and security are lacking;

On the other hand, the management of technical resources, conceived at the beginning of the network of networks as a restrained configuration, is reaching the limits of its stability, nevertheless without fulfilling the demand for greater transparency and equity.

Numerous more or less official authorities strive to influence the debates publicized by the WSIS. But to this day the progress is disappointing. Unable to structure the three principles of complexity, completeness and coherence, the analyses remain marked by the power of "experts" (captains of industry, technocrats or self-proclaimed "representatives" of civil society). Still absent is one vital partner: the Internet users, who make the network live and grow in the day-to-day in many innovative, unpredictable ways. Hence there is no answer to this recurrent concern: how can the generalization of the Internet benefit the citizens of all parts of the world in a globalized politico-economic environment? [1]

Here we hit upon the very general problems of identity and freedom, of responsibility and security, of private property and general interest. Yet too often these challenges are grouped into antagonistic pairs whereas a pragmatic, concrete approach can, if we so desire, be structured using a normative approach. Insofar as Internet governance is not a formalized concept but a tool, a process and a continuous development of interactions, the research community is invited to take hold of this object, to reflect on its limits and possibilities, outside of any narrow agenda. The Vox Internet seminar has thus worked to reinsert some of the corpus of Internet issues into the field of theoretical research, focusing less on the how of Internet governance and more on the why.

The process that we have undertaken aims at linking together thematic approaches both by discipline (law, economics, communication science, computer science, political science) and by sector (industry, administration, associations). Through the diversity of the styles and topics included in this report, and in the production process itself, we have been able to isolate a first set of key issues.

Method questions

The Vox Internet seminar has attempted to experiment with an organizational and meeting mode based on a rationale of an active network built around a community of knowledge. This is intended to provide a balance between an open network of researchers and experts, meeting together on a purely voluntary basis, together with a collaborative management of work, motivated by a project (a report) framed by a tight calendar.

The participants represent a wide range of origins and statuses (professionals, officials, researchers, consultants, doctoral candidates, NGO members, etc.), even though this diversity was not a criterion for being accepted in the working groups. However, a totally open network would not have been fully suited to reflection. The invitation process (albeit informal) followed a rhizomic pattern that included anyone whose work, intellectual efforts or daily commitment showed an interest for the challenges selected by the piloting committee. It was therefore not a question of bringing together a large group, but progressively throughout the seminars, of bringing together the participants freely in a "community of knowledge." The delicate equilibrium between cooptation (were it carried out along intellectual criteria) and open forum requires a continual back-and-forth between making the debates public and accepting members. The progressive constitution of an open community allowed participants engaged in a collaborative project to have their efforts evaluated in real time.

Due to the declared goal of applying a multidisciplinary, multi-sector approach involving many players to objects that are complex but nevertheless commonplace, the panelists and participants had to give simultaneous translation to their opinions and analysis. Thus, within a pre-constructed thematic framework, with no claims to legitimacy or comprehensiveness, a series of localized issues were communicated in order to elaborate a series of shared concepts. Faced with these very contemporary challenges, the multidisciplinary and multi-sector "dispute" allowed a new dynamic to be born between research on one side and socio-political issues on the other. This new dynamic maintains the integrity of knowledge and its effect on the practical field.

The decision to give equal weight to the presentations and discussions enabled summaries of the debates to be drafted. Made available via a distribution list, these constituted the second section of the reflection. Far from wanting to reach a consensus, it was a question of seeing a mosaic of comments and documents or complementary references, all related to the theses or hypotheses being put forward.

The third step of the process was the drafting of the report by the piloting committee. The moderator for each session was assigned the task of proposing a new reflection, based on both a subject area (law, economics, political science, etc.), and presentations or deliberations, to translate the diversity of viewpoints, the multiple questions and the tensions persisting between competitive theses. The "state of knowledge" presented here does not hide its transient nature, but only asks to be completed. If for this it is useful to institutionalize the process further, then this institutionalization must nevertheless maintain the criteria that have allowed the first step to be accomplished successfully.

Lastly, the Vox Internet seminar intended to demonstrate the European scope of its work from the first phase onwards. This is obvious in the piloting committee make-up, the choice of the panelists for the closing session and the tone for all the sessions. It was confirmed by the regular participation of doctoral candidates (in law, communication science, political science, geography, etc.) from fifteen different nationalities. It is reinforced by the presentation of the elements of this report in various European academic and non-academic meetings.

Definition questions

At this stage in the work of the WSIS and the WGIG, there is no common agreement among stakeholders as to the definitions of the terms Internet, governance and moreover the notion of "Internet governance." However, these terms correspond to empirical arrangements and agreements concerning the relationships among numerous players. It has thus been observed that the structure of the Internet itself and its effects have been inadequately clarified.

The term governance itself tells of a crisis in public authority. It is strongly connoted with principles of private management, numerous parties and the contractualization of the law, following the principles of Anglo-Saxon common law. Can it be applied to the management of a network that is described more and more as a "public resource" and a "common good"? These notions go beyond the categories of national or international public law. This legal debate is part of a more general crisis of social normativity, fueled by the public power’s withdrawal from its ruling duties, and by the lack of democracy in the consultation procedures. In line with Michel Foucault’s thoughts, the strategic relations among many players could also be analyzed in terms of "governability," thus, using the technologies of power.

Framework questions

The general observation that the current Internet management organs were lacking in equity and representativity led to considering that the UN framework was appropriate for opening a debate and making recommendations. However, at the same time, the UN system is itself criticized for its management, decision-making and organizational modes. Therefore, we are seeing an attempt to establish a new form of international cooperation, making wide use of the concept of multi-stakeholders, even within a system that is seeking deep-reaching reform. Moreover, it is not easy to establish the coherence between the functions of international organisms established by treaty, such as the ITU, WIPO, OECD, UNESCO, and the de facto functions exercised by the organizations of technical coordination of Internet such as ICANN, IETF or W3C.

The sentiment shared by the international community is that the Internet landscape is vast but not universally, or equitably, shared. It remains segmented from both the economic and geographic point of view. Without being able to measure or interpret it precisely, we have noticed that the north-south divide, the disparities within a given are (cities, countryside, islands, etc.) and within a given population (age groups, sexes, occupations, education levels, lifestyle, etc.) have sometimes been reduced, and sometimes been made worse by the rise of digital technology.

On the level of the "historical" representation of the bodies that manage the Internet, the paradigm that has been arbitrarily adopted is either two-part (supply-demand) or three-part, between the private sector (the telecommunications industry, IT services and cultural industries), governments and civil society. [2] This second paradigm was used for the WSIS, but this classification tends to minimize certain legitimate interests, including those of academia and research, individual users, civil servants, the non-commercial sector, etc. However, at the same time, the potential for network innovation cannot be denied and the daily practices of Internet uses are continually upsetting the established framework.

Regulatory questions

In this regard, it was pointed out that the current relations among those involved in the Internet are the translation of informal rules established by associations in the 1980s and ’90s, going against the weighty procedures of the organisms that dictated computer and telecommunications norms. Today, it would appear that these same players are defending the status quo, while others are pursuing an open tradition of free expression of diversity and demand - this is the example of peer-to-peer and free software.

Furthermore, numerous asymmetries have appeared and are reinforced by the continuous deployment of the network on an international scale: limited and geographically concentrated root-servers, the "associative" allocation of IP addresses, backbone managers organized as North American oligopolies, interconnection costs without reciprocity agreements, search engines in a nearly monopolistic position, etc. We could add to this list of asymmetries the domain name system’s quasi-monolingual Anglo-Saxon scripts and the general power to name the categories of the Internet that is in the hands of ICANN, which decides on the quantity and quality of top-level domain names, even for country codes. Thus the notion of network neutrality is called into doubt and merits being studied and assessed.

In parallel, the debates of the Vox Internet seminar have brought to light the expression of a radical tension between the principle of creation and the principle of conservation. Certain experts consider the system to be stable, needing conservational measures in order to increase its security, resilience, reliability and integrity. Others support the idea of moving ahead while guaranteeing the current interoperability and functions of the network (Next Generation Network’s project). Still others emphasize the fact that a growing number of Internet exchanges are already taking place outside of the domain name system. This situation could constitute the premises for redefining the dominant Internet paradigm, hence innovation would again take on its full meaning.

The phenomena of delocalization and virtualization linked to the deployment of the Internet lead to economic and societal effects that are poorly identified and poorly measured. The interrelations of the notions of space (real and virtual) and communities (of web surfers, clients and users) lead to new forms of reasoning in the exchange of goods and services. The distribution modes and the sharing of value create effects for opportunities and externalities that have not been sufficiently studied. We are witnessing the emergence of compensation models representing modes of consumption that are not founded on commercial exchange. Furthermore, technology is not accepted in the same way by different social groups, communities or individuals, depending on the society in question.

New bases for Internet governance

If the heart of the Internet is characterized by a unified protocol governing how two or more entities interrelate (addresses, machines or people), we are forced to recognize that the number of data packets, routes for data transfer, ways to access this infrastructure, contents transmitted and regulatory modes are all increasing. The Internet, approaching its fortieth birthday, is a source of political, social and commercial tensions, due to the incongruity of a nearly monopolistic infrastructure for a platform of innovations that are just as abundant as they are unpredictable.

The Vox Internet research program chose to trace backwards from the uses towards the tools and institutions. Three large domains provided a first field for observing the mutations introduced by the Internet: technology, economics, law. After eight seminar sessions, a few modifications have occurred in the vocabulary of Internet governance:

Confidence rather than security,

Adaptability rather than performance,

Correcting asymmetries rather than achieving equity,

Responsibility instead of transparence,

The right to diversity rather than inclusiveness,

Exchange economy instead of information or knowledge economy.

This new terminology opens the way to more conceptual breaking points, giving priority to:

Identities (not identity),

Maintaining the technical architecture as an open system (otherwise we would be condemned to continually filling in the gaps of a system limited to what has already been acquired),

The socio-political formatting of the network (more determinant for the future than a mythical technical neutrality),

The right to an interactive international existence (respecting sovereignty),

The plurality of the actors’ capabilities (which is the basis for the pluralism of powers).

From a functional angle, the issue of governance thus gets rid of an undefined and uncontrollable extension of its subject. The Internet functions first and foremost following a principle of voluntary cooperation, of the desire to interrelate. The issue of governance is also protected from legislative inflation that quickly becomes obsolete: "good usage" based on the notion of a common good encompasses the contractual relations of private law, multilateral agreements, and the freely consented governing of conduct.

The notion of Internet governance therefore calls for supporting diversity and reinforcing legal competition, and for the advancement of new instruments of political deliberation. In short, it calls for a renewed conception of the old pairing of the technological and the social in the public realm. This paradigm, which could aim towards proposing a new "social contract" for the digital world, is still vague. Consequently, the task that falls to researchers is three-fold: to clarify, to experiment and model, to debate. The Vox Internet research program intends to follow this path, opening up to other disciplines, to new partnerships and to new working methods.