This summer I had the chance to attend two Internet Governance (IG) events, namely the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) and the European Summer School on Internet Governance (EuroSSIG). While both events differed in the format and to some extent in content, the thread connecting both events was the ongoing global processes, such as the Global Digital Compact (GDC) and the anticipation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20) that are expected to bring changes and new challenges to IG.
EuroDIG and the future of Internet Governance
The annual European gathering of IG professionals, governmental representatives, civil society and the representatives of youth took place this year in the beautiful city of Vilnius. The overarching theme of EuroDIG 2024 focused on finding the right balance between innovation and regulation.
The IG sessions focused on the ongoing negotiations of the GDC and the upcoming WSIS+20. The GDC was scrutinised from the historic perspective of IG developments and compared with NETmundial+10 São Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines which clearly lay out the conditions and steps to achieve a full multistakeholder environment when the future of the internet is discussed (see our previous blogpost on the topic here). One of the key issues identified by the participants during the EuroDIG 2024 sessions was the difficulties that less-resourced organisations face in effectively participating in IG. The ability to participate does not in itself ensure diverse participation, as financial and information asymmetry, such as understanding the jargon and the complexity of processes, between stakeholders creates a significant challenge for less resourced stakeholders to meaningfully engage in IG discussions.
When it comes to discussions on the future of the internet, there are several relevant venues to keep in mind, including their varying degrees of "openness". There are multilateral fora, such as the United Nations and multistakeholder-driven fora, such as the ICANN or the National and Regional Internet Governance Forum (NRI IGF) initiatives. Especially the importance of the National and Regional IGFs were highlighted as the key place for bottom-up IG related discussions. This was an interesting discussion as the upcoming WSIS+20 review next year will decide on the mandate of the IGF and its potential extension or modification. This might influence the NRIs despite their organisational independence.
EuroSSIG and the future cohort of Internet Governance leaders
Following the EuroDIG, in mid-July, I attended the European Summer School on Internet Governance (EuroSSIG). The week-long course was packed with conversations with experienced professionals across the Domain Name System (DNS) industry. Speakers and participants had a chance to delve deeper into the subject matter in an informal setting after the official programme ended. The discussed topics reflected the most fundamental issues for the IG.
How is the internet governed?
We discussed the multilateral and multistakeholder fora and processes, and challenges with the technical underpinnings of the internet, such as allocation of IP addresses, the issue of the depletion of IPv4 and the difficulties in shifting to IPv6. From the naming perspective, we explored the management of the Top-Level Domain registries, root zone servers and the DNS.
The functioning of the internet is not only affected by the abovementioned technical processes and institutions, such as ICANN or the Regional Internet Registries, but also by the digital regulation. We discussed cyber security from both legal and technical perspectives, including cyberattack attributions and the use of criminal law to prohibit certain behaviour online. We also discussed the UN Cybercrime treaty negotiations, and its aim to harmonise international criminal law with the focus on cross-border police cooperation to tackle cybercrime. However, the broad definition of a cybercrime as a crime committed through ICT systems leaves room for potential misuse by states that would pass laws criminalising certain conduct committed through an ICT system. The treaty could be then used as a criminal Mutual Legal Assistance treaty.
Finally, we reflected on how technologies can encroach on human rights. We focused on the issues the latest developments in the field of AI and the right to privacy. We discussed how AI as such is a surveillance tool as AI models need a great amount of data. Practices such as datafication, i.e. turning more areas of human behaviour into quantifiable data, often without consent, are used to further train AI models.
One theme was, however, overshadowing the rest: the evolution of global IG and the challenges it faces. The fast-paced technological developments and an ever-increasing online presence of the world population brought about new services such as e-commerce platforms, social media on one hand, and cybercrime and hacking on the other. These developments were raising the interest of governments to create rules for this uncharted territory then. However, governmental interventions bring challenges, as the multistakeholder approach is disregarded and the preference is given to the multilateral international fora, where the governments are the final decisionmakers.
One of the EuroSSIG highlights was the chance to discuss the ongoing key developments for the future of IG, as they unfolded in real time. The latest revision of the GDC was published during the summer school. It was invaluable to me to be able to discuss these events directly with the seasoned professionals and discuss their perspectives on the matter.
Finally, we took advantage of the newly acquired knowledge in a practicum consisting of negotiating of the GDC on behalf of different stakeholder groups. The key difference between the simulated and the real GDC negotiations was that unlike in the UN-meetings where only countries can determine the outcome of the document, our simulated negotiations had a true multistakeholder spirit, where all stakeholders were treated equally. While the outcome of our simulated negotiations represented a compromise among different interest groups, we still have to wait for the final result of the real GDC negotiations at the Summit of the Future in September.
