Two years ago, in March 2004, at the Global Forum on Internet Governance, held at UN Headquarters in New York, Secretary-General Kofi Annan highlighted what in the beginning of the twenty-first century is more and more evident: the Internet has become, in a relatively short time, an essential instrument for modern society. "The Internet has revolutionized … the very fabric of human communication and exchange", he said. "In managing, promoting and protecting its presence in our lives, we need to be no less creative than those who invented it".1

Traditional ways of governance might prove useless in dealing with such a complex and peculiar entity as the Internet, but the increasing awareness of its impact on society at the economic, social, political and legal levels has in recent times brought issues of Internet governance into the spotlight. Many important issues are at stake, such as preventing or at least reducing the risk of an excessive fragmentation ("Balkanization") of the Internet; protecting the rights of all the stakeholders, while defining their responsibilities; safeguarding end users from crimes and abuses; and finally encouraging every opportunity for further development.

There is only one thing that everybody agrees on when it comes to Internet governance, says Vittorio Bertola, Chairman of the At Large Advisory Committee of the Internet Company for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN): "It has proven to be a very difficult and controversial task."2 The controversy begins when the object of debate has to be defined. "Different perceptions of the meaning of this term trigger different policy approaches and expectations"3, as pointed out by Jovan Kurbalija, Director of DiploFoundation, a self-described knowledge organization researching Internet governance issues. The expansion of the Internet and the opportunities it offers encompass problems of jurisdiction, ways of developing the technological infrastructure, protection of national interests while reaching out to other countries, safeguard of freedom of expression, and the fight against cybercrimes. This complexity is addressed from different and potentially clashing points of view by engineers, politicians, lawyers, diplomats and human rights activists. Furthermore, an equal variety of views can be found when it comes to its governance.

The governance of the Internet started in a peculiar way: in its early development phase, it was a government-sponsored project. In the 1960s, the United States Department of Defense wanted a communication system that was elastic and robust enough to endure partial failures and still function correctly, in case of a possible nuclear attack. At the height of the cold war, this was something that linear communication facilities were not able to do; and from this idea the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPANet) was born. In 1969, the first node of one of the pioneers of today's Internet, ARPANET, was made operational at the University of California in Los Angeles. The following decade witnessed the gradual development of IPSS, a network based on the packet switching paradigm (information units are split into packets to be routed separately), which spread from the United States and extended to Europe, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia.

The birth of the universal "network of networks" that we now refer to as the Internet is considered by many to be on 1 January 1983, when the NSFNet was made operational by the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF). NSFNet was a university-wide network based on TCP/IP (transmission control protocol and Internet protocol), whose flexibility in working over already-existing separate local networks enabled mergers and growth. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) was created in 1986 to deal with the development of the Internet through a "cooperative, consensus-based decision-making process",4 with no central government, strategy or planning. The Internet development community was mainly academic in composition and style, as decentralized as the Internet itself was, with as little structure as possible and the core belief that society can avoid being guided by a central hierarchical, bureaucratic authority, if the right set of rules for peer-to-peer interaction are found.5

The World Wide Web--the common space of communication and information sharing invented by Tim Berners-Lee at the CERN in Geneva, Switzerland--gave a "public face" to the Internet in the early 1990s. The development of the first Web pages and browsers, coupled with the opening of the Web to commercial purposes, gave a popular dimension in what had been up to that moment a primarily academic phenomenon. In 1994, NSF commissioned the management of the Domain Name System (DNS)--allocation of addresses and administration of address databases--to three organizations belonging to the private sector. This decision originated a "DNS war" that lasted for the next few years, in which other entities and organizations became stakeholders: nation-States, international organizations, civil society and the business sector. Reorganization was necessary and it happened in 1998 with the establishment of ICANN.

A controversial body since its creation, ICANN is a non-profit organization set up by the Commerce Department of the United States during the second term of the Clinton Administration. It is responsible for "coordinating the management of the technical elements of the DNS to ensure universal resolvability, so that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses"6 by supervising the "distribution of unique technical identifiers used in the Internet's operations". Relying on a bottom-up, consensus-based approach, ICANN is undoubtedly a shift towards a more international, coordinated management with respect to previous entities that were performing under the direct contract of the United States Government. Its status of a private-sector organization, in partnership with the public, contributes to its mission of "preserving the operational stability of the Internet, promoting competition and achieving broad representation of global Internet communities".6

ICANN is an example of how interest groups with different backgrounds can interact and take unified decisions--but it is also their bone of contention. It has been blamed by various parties for its lack of "transparency, accountability and legitimacy",7 and it has been accused to be either too business-dependent or too government-related. Moreover, although the United States Commerce Department insists on its function of "overseeing" and not controlling ICANN, more and more countries become increasingly aware of the importance of the Internet in so many respects, and they are not happy to realize that it is in fact run by an entity "accountable to the Attorney-General of California and under the authority of the US Government".7

The increasing pressure by Governments around the world on the United States to reconsider their de facto control over the Internet and yield some of their authority to an independent international body (the United Nations obviously come to mind) has met correspondingly with increasing resistance by Washington. The plan to make ICANN a fully privatized body was set aside in June 2005, when a note from the Commerce Department made it clear that the United States would retain its control "to preserve the security and stability" of the DNS.8 After some hints that the United States Government would reaffirm its ultimate supervision on ICANN until 2011,10 the Department of Commerce has recently signed a three-year agreement with the body that plans its gradual "liberation" from any direct political control. Full privatization and independence, according to United States Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications John Kneur, should be achieved by 2009. This decision was welcomed by the European Commission as a crucial step towards a more international approach to any Internet governance-related issue.
The will of countries and Governments worldwide to have a more defining role in the control of the Internet and the necessity to discuss times and ways in which this could happen had a tangible outcome in recent years with the establishment of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which was held in two phases, in Geneva and Tunis in 2003 and 2005, respectively, and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), whose inaugural meeting took place in Athens, Greece from 30 October to 2 November 2006.

IGF meant to be, in Kofi Annan's words, the "new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue", bringing challenges and potential for new directions to the international community. The meeting, which one of the moderators called "a giant experiment and a giant brainstorming", gave the opportunity to panellists from all sectors of society to interact with the audience and even remote participants who took part in the discussion via e-mail, messaging and chat rooms, in accordance with the interactive approach that the Secretary-General had hoped for in the development phase of the Forum. As all participants agreed on, IGF is not a starting point, but stems from the process begun at the WSIS, where the roles of all stakeholders started to be outlined and the need "to share best practices" was identified. Technology, many panellists pointed out, moves at a pace that policy is often not able to cope with; thus, "those working in policy areas should be as creative as those who created the technology".12

The four-day discussion about openness, security, diversity and access--the four main themes pre-identified as crucial for the future of the Internet--took place in this light, pointing out some emerging issues. The problem of access was the subject of a lively debate. Advocates of access as a fundamental human right stated that without it young people can no longer fully grow up in the modern world--"the Internet is a way of life"12 and it should therefore be granted. Other participants rejected this vision of passive, top-down reception in favour of active individual-seeking. "It's something that we have to do", Bill Woodcock, Research Director of Packet Clearing House, said. "Not something that can be given."

An important topic that, in the opinion of many, should be the core issue of the next IGF meeting, scheduled for November 2007 in Rio de Janeiro, is "access to access". This was a concept brought up in the final session, referring to the fact that people might be fortunate enough to have access to the equipment necessary to establish an Internet connection, but without access to the right people who can provide an education that makes capacity-building meaningful. "Access to access" conveys the user's social or cultural part of access to the Internet. There are more than technical details to the problem of access, as some Forum speakers emphasized. Continuous financing is needed to make capacity-building a real possibility-and even more important than money is the development of "a programme that allows those who receive the education to have an opportunity to use the education and to take it further".

In its conclusion, IGF brought to the table two other issues that are likely to be the subject of passionate debate in the near future for the important effects they can have on society and human practices: property rights and changes in education opportunities through the Internet. Fostering and improving the flexibility of intellectual property rights, said Dr. Tsanakas, Chairman of the Emerging Issues session, is of paramount importance to "guarantee and secure creativity and at the same time preserve accessibility for the vast majority of the young users".13 Citizens can also increase their level of awareness about conditions and factors that affect their lives, and opportunities should be provided in this regard, as a contribution to "strengthening democracy".

After the doubts that had been expressed about its structure and the possibility of success during its setting-up and opening phases, the Forum ended on a "high note", with representatives of all sectors and nations expressing their satisfaction in joining the "experiment" that had just taken place and their appreciation for its outcomes. Ironically referring to his own old joke about every United Nations meeting being "either a success or a great success", Nitin Desai, the UN Secretary-General's Special Advisor for Internet Governance, pointed out with a smile that the success of the event had been "outstanding".14

Yet, not everyone is enthusiastic about the Forum. There has been disappointment in the restricted power that has been granted to it and concern that this very limited authority will never allow any individual country, with the exception of the United States, any effective chance to have its voice heard and its needs or will taken into consideration. IGF is a matter of figuring out ways to bring two cultures together: the non-governmental decentralized Internet community, characterized by bottom-up and collective decision-making, and the centralized formal world of governmental entities--a commendable and valuable task, but an incredibly difficult one, considering that "the Forum is not designed to make decisions" and its emphasis is "on voluntary cooperation not legal compulsion",15 as Mr. Desai pointed out in his opening remarks in Athens.

In a field such as Internet governance, where the mere meaning of these two words lead to disagreements and different visions, voluntary cooperation might prove particularly difficult, as some would argue, and even if a substantial agreement is reached, the status of IGF simply does not imply any decision will be implemented. As wide, multilateral and international in scope as it might be, IGF is, ultimately, only a venue for dialogue. All stakeholders expressed the hope that everyone would leave Athens "with a clear view of how to move forward";12 but the power to actually move forward, in whatever way, does not belong to the otherwise praiseworthy efforts of the Forum, and many of its attendees wondered why. As Adama Samassékou, President of the WSIS Preparatory Committee, pointed out, "after all the wonderful discussions we've had, why shouldn't we have something specific come out of it?"

According to Mr. Desai, the very nature of the Forum prevents it from having any legislative capacity. For a body to have any decision-making power, its membership has to be precisely established, he said, while "IGF is an open door, a town hall, all views are welcome". Emily Taylor, Director of Legal and Policy for Nominet, summarized it well on the eve of the Forum, describing it as an opportunity to form "coalitions of the willing".16 Regardless of whether IGF-like discussions actually lead to decisions or not, some parties also express their dislike of the fact that they happened in the first place. As David Johnson and David Post of the Cyberspace Law Institute proposed in the mid-90s, a discussion of the ways in which the Internet could be governed is obsolete, as "the net allows the problem of collective action to be solved by a new, decentralized process that does not closely resemble those we have used in the past to pass laws and enforce behavioral norms".17 It is pointless to try to figure out what authorities should be allowed to take decisions about the regulation of the Internet; any policy is going to prove successful exclusively depending on its adoption by the community through "decentralized collective action".18

Decentralization was one of the core principles for the development of the World Wide Web; in the words of its creator Tim Berners-Lee, "society can run without a hierarchical bureaucratic government being involved at every step, if only we can hit on the right set of rules for peer-peer interaction".19 This is a step further than self-regulation--intended as the development of codes and standards that stakeholders create and agree to bind to as a compromise against external constraints)--that is what discussions like IGF are mostly about. No regulation should be scheduled at all, but should be left to emerge through consensus.

David Clark, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and leader in Internet development since the mid-70s, once said it all: "We have no kings or presidents. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Considering the extent to which entities like the Swedish "Pirate Party" have recently influenced their country's policies as regards information freedom, file-sharing and copyright issues, it is likely that any future IGF meetings or such gatherings will have to take into serious account these anarchists of the Net, who firmly believe that "if enough people do it, it will be the way".

Due to its open and inclusive nature, IGF has the potential to play a role in the development of any public policies regarding the governance of the Internet. The vision encouraged by the Forum-the achievement of consensus through an open and informal deliberation that does not neglect any stakeholder nor establishes any hierarchy of needs-is likely to fit the culture and the architecture of cyberspace better than a centralized structure in which one or more Governments play the big role. In this light, the United Nations is perhaps the only international organization able to provide enough legitimacy to the discussion and make sure that all voices are, at least, heard. What are the concrete results that these voices can elicit-and in what time span this is going to happen-are other important questions that need to be addressed in the near future.