I do not have a strong view on who should govern the underlying technology of the Internet but I am beginning to become alarmed at how only one side of the debate seems to be being heard - at least online. Maybe it’s just in the parts of the Internet and mainstream media I read but there’s a remarkably consistent tale being told from Foreign Affairs to NPR to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Put baldly it says that letting other countries than the US have a say in the running of fundamental aspects of the Internet like the allocation of domain names is at best an unneccessary risk and at worst a plot by totalitarian regimes like Cuba, Syria and China to make the Internet more easily controlled. Strikingly (as I noted earlier) I am not aware of any comment pieces that put the other side. So I asked a friend of mine who has done research in this area, Lee Salter, what he thought and I provide his response below to, I hope, kick off a discussion:

Hmm, why non-US governance is important? Well, we can start by reversing the question ? why is US governance important? Well, it is important to US political and socio-economic interests ? control the internet and you control a great deal. This control is not direct or explicit, but like so much in the American Empire, indirect and implicit. For many in the USG control of the Internet is about extending a very particular American set of social relations around the world ? in much the same way as the domination of Hollywood sought to spread not just values, but specific forms of film making. On the other hand, there are some very explicit motivations, such as preparing American IT firms for the Internet in the first place to give them a ?competitive edge? when the net finally did start spreading. It also helps American concepts of (formalistic) free speech spread, not, of course, with the intention of really freeing people as such, but with the knowledge that the economic power of American (and European) media interests is such that they can flood the Internet with their content. In fact, we don?t even need to say that it is specifically American interests (though it is ? lots flows out of American through the Internet, but their parochialism prevents much getting in), because the functioning of the capitalist system (within which the Internet is embedded) is such that money wins most of the time. Finally, it helps American political interests in the same way as radio and television helped push American political interests during the so-called Cold War: Mark Poster cites Regan as saying that ?Electronic beams blow through the Iron Curtain as though it were lace?. The Internet, similarly, opens the world to the American vista.

From the other perspective ? why is non-American governance importance, well, it is a strange question ? shouldn?t each political community be able to govern itself? Isn?t that what the ?democratic values? and ?freedoms?, for which the USG has killed millions of people around the world, are for? And if this is not possible, should they not have an equal or at least proportional say in how governance takes place? Why should the rest of the world be subject to America?s will? I expect if the rest of the world had a say, there would be the ?threat? that quite a different Internet would emerge ? for example, the Americans pushed for TCP/IP when Europeans were arguing for X.25. Of course, X.25 would have allowed each state to develop internetworking that would be quite specific to that state, but the TCP/IP model was forced through. I don?t think that the USG would be happy to have others having a say in the governance of the Internet if that say runs the threat of being different to the US model, not least because it might hit American economic expansion.

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