Internet-Governance on Philip Sheldrake

Toward a social compact for digital privacy and security

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Updated 16th September, embedding the videos of the session below.

The Global Commission on Internet Governance (ourinternet.org) was established in January 2014 to articulate and advance a strategic vision for the future of Internet governance. With work commencing in May 2014, the two-year project is conducting and supporting independent research on Internet-related dimensions of global public policy, culminating in an official commission report.

Destroying the web

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

[Written for the CIPR Friday Roundup .]

The Internet is the most powerful, flexible and critical infrastructure ever invented. Every aspect of our daily lives is supported by this wondrous invention.

But here’s the important thing.

We’ve passed the point where the fabric of our societies is supported by the Internet – the all pervasive Internet increasingly defines that fabric. Its architecture is becoming our architecture, and that is why any motion to challenge or change the way in which the Internet is governed must be subject to the most critical eye.

I’ve been on tenterhooks the past fortnight watching the deliberations of WCIT play out – the World Conference on International Telecommunications. WCIT is a UN body that has played a vital role over nearly one and a half centuries coordinating telecoms standards and interoperability and radio spectrum and satellite orbits, and it has tried once again to wrestle Internet governance from the hands of the open community that has shepherded it so beautifully to date.

The Internet we know and love is at serious risk

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

[Originally written for the CIPR Conversation Friday Roundup .]

Public relations – the pursuit of mutual understanding and goodwill – has been transformed by the Internet. Of that, no regular reader of The Conversation and the Roundup can be in doubt. And yet it is all too easy to take the Internet for granted.

The way the Internet has evolved to date has been critical to the way social media has evolved and our corresponding facilities as citizens, employees and consumers to participate, to innovate, to produce, to mashup, to share and to converse.

The open, decentralized Internet, governed by many stakeholders, is under threat. Right now, several countries, including China and Russia, are proposing to expand the powers of a non-transparent global institution, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), allowing it to change the rules on how our internet is used and governed.

And what’s worse, the ITU won’t even release their negotiating documents to the public or give internet users a seat at the table. The ITU simply isn’t used to public accountability.