India proposes new UN body for Internet related policies

1. US tries to extradite British student for the purely online activity of hosting a site that links to infringing material. Linked here. (In context: search engines such as Google do the same thing.)

2. “No! to ACTA” video gets more than 1 million hits – showing netizens’ interests in protecting their online freedom. Linked here.  (Short crisp video – Highly recommended watch!)

3. 108 top IP academics protest against ironically named “PROTECT-IP Act”. Linked here.  (The American bill seeks to apply even to domain names for countries outside US, like the .in or .uk domain for instance!)

4. US financial institutions cut off payments to Wikileaks. Linked here.

The ever reliable IP-Watch reports that in the recent UN General Assembly meeting on 26th October, India put forward a proposal for a new body, the United Nations Committee for Internet Related Policies (CIRP), for global internet related policies. As an aside, it is interesting to note the language in which this move is being described by different sources. While IP-Watch reports its purpose as I just mentioned – “global internet related policies”, others describe it as a “takeover of the internet”, and “body to run the internet”. I wonder what (lasting?) effect, if any, language has on determining views and opinions on this  topic.

Anyway, getting back to the point, the ‘governance’ of the internet is currently a very hazy affair. There is no holistic way of controlling what goes on the internet of course, and there are different bodies responsible for different ‘parts’ of the internet. The issue of ‘internet governance’ was first brought to prominence in the World Summit on the Information Society 2003. Over this summit as well as the 2005 continuation of the summit, the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) was created. Despite this, USA’s dominant role in policy making continued as it refused to relinquish control over the ICANN stating that it wished to “maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file”. While the WGIG did explicitly recognize the institutional gaps in Internet Governance, no follow up action was taken and US continues to hold sway here.

CIRP – UN Committee for Internet Related Policies

India’s proposal to the UN was for a new institutional mechanism (CIRP) to ensure that the Internet is governed “in an open, democratic, inclusive and participatory manner, with the participation of all stakeholders, so as to evolve universally acceptable, and globally harmonized policies in important areas and pave the way for a credible, constantly evolving, stable and well-functioning Internet that plays its due role in improving the quality of peoples’ lives everywhere.” (As stated in the proposal). It would therefore develop cross-country Internet related policies which also would take into consideration contextual issues such as human rights or development. “We believe that the governance of such an unprecedented global medium that embodies the values of democracy, pluralism, inclusion, openness and transparency should also be similarly inclusive, democratic, participatory, multilateral and transparent in nature,” said Mr. Dushyant Singh, Member of Parliament of India, who presented the proposal.

The CIRP would consist of 50 selected member states which would meet annually. It would have 4 advisory groups, representing civil society, the private sector, intergovernmental and international organizations, and the technical and academic community. The CIRP would report directly to the United Nations General Assembly and would be funded both from the regular fund of the UN as well as through subsidiary bodies of the CIRP such as registration fees collected. It would have its own research wing and the current open multi-stakeholder forum (which, unfortunately is teeth-less), ie the Internet Governance Forum, would compliment the CIRP by providing inputs for consideration. 

In furtherance of this goal, India called for an open-ended working group under the Commission on Science and Technology for Development to draw up detailed terms of reference with a view of actualizing it within the next 18 months. 

Many sources covering this development have viewed this negatively – saying that India is putting forward a proposal to have an inter-governmental body to takeover the internet, or to run the internet. This is a skewed version of what India is actually proposing though – perhaps coming out of an “Occupy Wallstreet” tinted perspective. The worst case scenario I can envisage coming out of India’s proposal is an intergovernmental watch over the internet and its policies – with perhaps the recommendations of the advisory bodies not being taken seriously. However dystopian as this may be, what is important to note is that even this is more multilateral than the current scenario. Currently, the US alone is by far the most dominant voice, and there are other areas of the internet that are ‘run’ by private corporations. Areas such as IP enforcement, censorship, network neutrality, online privacy, etc are all crucial areas which require proper policy measures. Referring to any of the examples given right at the beginning of the post – these are all instances which quite adequately display that the current system of ‘governance’ is lacking. 

Even if it turns out to be solely inter-governmental, there would at least be an open and transparent process and procedure, allowing some democratization of these decisions. But it is much more likely that if such a UN body does come into being, the other stakeholders (civil society, tech and academia, private corps) will have a say in these policies and decisions, thus truly making internet governance a multi-stakeholder process — at least much more of one than it currently is. All this being said though, it remains to be seen whether other countries are open to this idea or not.