This title lifts the lid on internet governance within standards bodies with detailed insight into a world which, although highly technical, very much affects the way in which citizens live and work. It details the way in which citizens, states, companies, and engineers interact within standards bodies and seek to steer policy adoption.

A groundbreaking study of one of the most crucial yet least understood issues of the twenty-first century: the governance of the Internet and its content

The book addresses representation of the public interest in Internet standard developing organisations (SDOs). Much of the existing literature on Internet governance focuses on international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The literature covering standard developing organisations has to date focused on organisational aspects. This book breaks new ground with investigation of standard development within SDO fora. Case studies centre on standards relating to privacy and security, mobile communications, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and copyright. The book lifts the lid on internet standard setting with detailed insight into a world which, although highly technical, very much affects the way in which citizens live and work on a daily basis. In doing this it adds significantly to the trajectory of research on Internet standards and SDOs that explore the relationship between politics and protocols. The analysis contributes to academic debates on democracy and the internet, global self-regulation and civil society, and international decision-making processes in unstructured environments. The book advances work on the Multiple Streams Framework (MS) by applying it to decision-making in non-state environments, namely SDOs which have long been dominated by private actors. The book is aimed at academic audiences in political science, computer science communications and science and technology studies as well as representatives from civil society, the civil service, government, engineers and experts working within SDO fora. It will also be accessible to students at the postgraduate and undergraduate levels.

This book provides an incisive analysis of the emergence and evolution of global Internet governance, revealing its mechanisms, key actors and dominant community practices. Based on extensive empirical analysis covering more than four decades, it presents the evolution of Internet regulation from the early days of networking to more recent debates on algorithms and artificial intelligence, putting into perspective its politically-mediated system of rules built on technical features and power differentials. For anyone interested in understanding contemporary global developments, this book is a primer on how norms of behaviour online and Internet regulation are renegotiated in numerous fora by a variety of actors - including governments, businesses, international organisations, civil society, technical and academic experts - and what that means for everyday users. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Power and Authority in Internet Governance investigates the hotly contested role of the state in today's digital society. The book asks: Is the state "back" in internet regulation? If so, what forms are state involvement taking, and with what consequences for the future? The volume includes case studies from across the world and addresses a wide range of issues regarding internet infrastructure, data and content. The book pushes the debate beyond a simplistic dichotomy between liberalism and authoritarianism in order to consider also greater state involvement based on values of democracy and human rights. Seeing internet governance as a complex arena where power is contested among diverse non-state and state actors across local, national, regional and global scales, the book offers a critical and nuanced discussion of how the internet is governed – and how it should be governed. Power and Authority in Internet Governance provides an important resource for researchers across international relations, global governance, science and technology studies and law as well as policymakers and analysts concerned with regulating the global internet.

The book begins with an analysis of the technological infrastructure environment and of the manifold regulatory theories developed in the Internet Governance context. Based on this foundation the transnational normative ecosystem is outlined, followed by a detailed discussion of the substantive Internet Governance principles (such as legitimacy, participation, transparency, accountability). These considerations lead to the presentation of relevant international legal concepts (duty of co-operation, global public goods, shared spaces, due diligence, State responsibility) that merit more attention. The outlook proposes potential approaches for improving the future of the Internet Governance design.