Throughout the month of October the LSE Media Policy Project will be bringing you a special series of posts on Internet governance. Alison Powell, who will be curating the series, kicks it off by arguing that values are an important aspect of governance. Keep an eye out for the series in the coming weeks.
This summer, we have been treated to revelations about the extent to which the United States has collected personal data via the PRISM surveillance program, and seen the release of the film about WikiLeaks. What do these things have in common? They both illustrate how the data-rich, networked environment of the Internet disrupts our expectations about privacy, secrets, government power and even basic values like human rights – and that this disruption can make for good cinema!
When it was first commercialized in 1995, few people would have thought that the Internet would become the backbone for so many things: commerce, government, community-building, even forming relationships and friendships. Now, the network of networks extends across borders, and continues to inspire difficult questions: Should internet service providers be responsible for what they distribute? Should governments be required to respect the privacy of people who are not their citizens? Should we have “national” internets? Is privacy online dead?
Back in 1999, Larry Lessig suggested that Internet governance needed to take account of four related aspects: Law, Social Norms, Markets and Architecture. I would argue that a fifth aspect needs to be considered: Values – including the ethical and moral considerations that shape both our laws and norms. But thinking about our values, norms, and laws (from the perspective of wherever we might be geographically or culturally) as well as thinking about the requirements of the market and the technical opportunities and constraints makes the problem of internet governance a thorny one indeed.
October being the month of the Internet Governance Forum, I will be working with the others in the MPP team to bring you a special series on Internet Governance that tackles these thorny problems in a series of guest posts. As I have been researching activism and advocacy about the internet for almost a decade now, and I am part of the European Network of Excellence on Internet Science, which investigates best practices for governing the future internet.
I will be attending the Internet Governance Forum, a UN-supported meeting where governments, civil society and corporate representatives talk out the most significant issues in internet governance. In the run-up to this event we’ve lined up a terrific set of guest posts to introduce some of today’s most compelling internet policy issues, from the human rights impact of PRISM to the impact of architectural internet standards, the problems of making internet service providers liable for their traffic, and much more. When I get to the IGF I’ll also report on the discussions there – and take forward any points our readers might have so I encourage you to comment on the pieces in the series or get in touch if you’d like to contribute.
This article gives the views of the author, and does not represent the position of the LSE Media Policy Project blog, nor of the London School of Economics.
