INTERNET GOVERNANCE: POLITICS AND GEOPOLITICS

摘要

There is no longer any need these days to begin an article about Internet technology by recounting the history of the Net's creation or by explaining why it is so important for human civilization. The Internet is now part of everyday lives for most of the people on this planet. Network technologies are an integral part of the economy. “Electronic government” (or to be more precise, electronic interaction between the government, society and citizens) no longer seems an exotic privilege of technologically advanced countries. Of course, the penetration rate of Internet technologies varies from country to country, for a whole number of reasons. These reasons, as well as the various consequences of the rapid development of the Internet, have been the subject of numerous studies in areas such as technology, macroeconomics, culture, law, philosophy and even religion—several religious groups have already sprung up whose members maintain contact only via the Net. But the question that often remains unasked is, who governs all this multitude of electronic communications, data transfer protocols and domain name registration systems? That question is becoming especially important now that the Internet, unfortunately, is increasingly being used as a weapon in information wars—a weapon of “mass destruction” or a weapon for “surgical strikes”. The Georgian-Ossetian military conflict that broke out in the summer of 2008 saw widespread use of Internet technologies for propaganda purposes (which, admittedly, was not the first time that this had happened). What is more, entire “hostile” domains on the territory of one of the participants in the conflict came under attack. It is quite indicative that the country that effected such a radical restriction of freedom of information was no other than Georgia, whose leaders like to call themselves “the bulwark of democracy in the confrontation with imperialist Russia.” Meanwhile, in Russia itself no punitive measures were undertaken again any segments of the Internet, including the Georgia websites.The purpose of this article is to analyze the current situation concerning Internet governance on the global scale, and the attendant political and geopolitical problems.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19934271003595111