About 6 months ago, Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC) opened the first Internet café in Kabul, laying the groundwork for the conservative and traditionally closed society of Afghanistan to dart into the global spectrum of the Internet. But the war-ravaged Muslim country entered a community facing crucial challenges with vaguely defined impact and no clear solutions in sight.
Today, Internet access is available to over 600 million people from countries spanning the globe. The multifarious languages, cultures, philosophies, and intellectual opportunities the network provides undisturbed space for, combined with its far-flung purview, have given the Internet a stature surpassing both the physical and political boundaries of our societies. The immature state of the world has set conditions for new, previously unseen issues to emerge within the framework of such a global community. Internet communication is reaching every corner of the globe, permeating daily agenda, and challenging leaders to find reliable paths towards synchronizing the booming diversity of the Internet with the pace of life in their own countries.
State of the Internet
Regardless of the stunning achievements of the Internet, in recent years, the concept of the so-called
global village has indisputably disinterred critical problems, arising from the congregation of mammoth crowds of people. And unlike in every other similar instance, appropriate level of control is what the Internet most lacks.
With the exception of its very start in the 1960's when the network was primarily targeted for defense research and technology development, the Internet has preserved its core philosophy over its evolution process -- a decentralized realm offering untroubled freedom and anonymity on international level. In 1998, the United States government made a significant effort towards its separation from the business of domain name allocation by transferring the authority to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an independent, non-profit body. The technical architecture of the network continues to be tightly overseen by standard-developing organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). But since no internationally regulated control of Internet's infrastructure exists, the power of organizations like ICANN lies in their operations of key network components, such as root servers and critical data transmission protocols.
Internet's globalization, however, is posing new problems, affecting, even obscuring the boundaries between technology and real life.
One of the oldest and most popular services, e-mail, is threatening to turn into an ominously vile marketing machine. The lack of technological and legislative governance has provided mediocre people with the tools to make easy money employing despicable methods. Today, millions of spam messages are clogging Internet backbones each day, mindlessly diverting important financial resources from hard-hit companies. The indispensable use of e-mail services to users and the witty techniques avoiding spam protection filters are posing a great challenge to the future of both the Internet and the world's economic growth. Researchers are predicting that it is a matter of months for unsolicited commercial mail to transgress the number of regular messages, and soon, wanted e-mails will be comprising only a fraction of incoming electronic mail traffic.
While the majority of Internet users are eager to confront the spam problem, other issues have proven how the global network can alter common perceptions and seemingly solid morale, while troubling traditional industries beyond recognition.
In May 1999, Shawn Fanning, a nineteen years old U.S. college student, revolutionized the Internet with the simple concept of file-sharing. Napster, the brainchild of then undergraduate Fanning, catapulted the idea of open, free, and unhampered swapping of audio and video files, while, at the same time, captivated the attention of affected artists, producers, songwriters, and record labels. Napster's astonishing popularity demonstrated the immense potential of the concept. More advanced, prosecution-immune technology emerged, forming decentralized networks of peer-to-peer swapping.
The advent of fast, broadband Internet connections skyrocketed the fears of the entertainment industry. Motion picture studios appeared incredibly susceptible to the growing effect of file-sharing, with stolen copies of unreleased movies spreading across the Net weeks before their official premieres. Rival movie and music makers are now supporting associations and establishing alliances, aimed at curbing illegal distribution and tackling the financial burdens of audio and video piracy. Software companies are also recognizing the staggering effects of illicit file-swapping. Major efforts to launch legal action against creators of file-sharing software and a frantic search of reliable and secure ways to digitally protect content are under way.
But probably the most disturbing consequence of free and easy file-sharing is the dramatic shift towards exonerating Internet piracy. According to CNET's Download.com, the most popular file-swapping program, Kazaa, has been downloaded more than 180 million times. For years, Kazaa has been at the top of the most downloaded software chart and data from the Internet research firm Nielesen//NetRatings indicates Sharman Networks, the parent company of Kazaa, is the 7th most popular property in the United States. The facts clearly demonstrate a great deal of tolerance shown towards such services. Yet it is widely indicative of a growing shallow-mindedness within the Internet community; of people getting devastatingly used to the free access to services they previously paid for. The unimpeded flow of intellectual property across the Net is undoubtedly obliterating arduously built respect for individual work, creativity, and expensive professional quality.
Nevertheless, the prosecution of criminal activities on the Internet is assisted neither by global politics, nor by relevant technology. For years, governments from all sides of the political spectrum have issued pleas to various technical architecture boards to implement traceability functions within emerging standards and data transmission protocols.
The January 2003 Slammer worm attack emphasized the tremendous complexity of tracking culprits across shady networks. The author of the virus that crippled Internet's key hubs and slowed down access around the globe will most probably remain unpunished. Both authoritarian and democratic political systems recognize the threat arising from virtually absolute anonymity. The communist government of China, for example, has long yearned for methods to carry out strict and unbreachable content filtering and has even proposed a change to Internet's IP allocation system. Western institutions have called for establishing legal possibilities to hunt for Internet criminals in countries lacking the appropriate legislative measures. A pending lawsuit in California against the Australia-based file-sharing service Kazaa is raising questions about legal rights in the global nature of the Net.
Internet's irrefutable welter continues to stress the growing need for high-quality governance. But ruling the most diverse community in the world is undoubtedly a challenge of colossal proportions.
A Blueprint for Governance
The tumultuous strides of humanity towards freedom and respect for human rights and dignity is unavoidably leading the Internet towards building its foundations and ruling principles on the basis of democracy. Having in mind, however, the global size of the network, reaching authoritarian societies and cultures, the implementation of such egalitarian values will offer the most obstructive challenges in the process.
It is of critical importance to recognize that the embedment of Internet in our everyday lives will require adamant efforts to alter the political systems, or at least, the international policies of countries trying to defy the natural pursuit of freedom.
Another vastly crucial fact is the location of key technological hubs. All root servers and most major networks and services are based in democratic countries. Internet's most critical infrastructure, standardization organizations, and current governing bodies are working on open terms, trying to preserve and develop the fundamental principles, while aspiring to work for the benefit of the common user.
Every blueprint for Internet governance is by virtue required to deal with several critical questions:
- How much should law intersect with Internet's rules?
- Who should regulate the Internet?
- How could a potential ruling body represent the wide diversity of the Internet?
- Who should have jurisdiction to resolve Internet disputes?
- How can an acceptable amount of objectivity be maintained while dealing with such disputes?
Current U.S. legislature prohibits software companies to export encryption technology to a list of countries, ruled by lawless and untrustworthy regimes. Although measures of such a sparing magnitude may be ineffective, the idea of restricting access to important Internet components may force compliance with common rules by disregardful states. In general, effective Internet governance requires participation on a political level. And in a certain way, Internet affairs should be no different than international politics. But the pervading interconnectedness of the Net, excludes the international policy of containment of non-democratic governments as a solution of choice.
Decisions concerning the ruling principles of the Internet have to be made with as far-reaching multinational consensus as possible. Yet countries trying to avoid the creation of pertinent laws and successful prosecution of culprits need to be harshly penalized. Underground hacker groups based in states lacking legislature relevant to Internet crimes, evade any type of responsibility for the damages they cause.
Even countries trying to project an image of well-working democracies seem nonchalant about implementing principles, and even laws their own legislatures have passed. Bulgaria, for instance, a E.U. and NATO candidate, is known to have at least three major web sites providing unhampered access to thousands of pirated software products, music, and movies. The Bulgarian government, despite its publicly stated efforts to combat the illegal distribution of digital products, apathetically does nothing to close known sites.
The inclusion of sanctions against government-tolerated illicit activities demands appropriate technological instrumentation. The issue of tracing the origins of unfriendly Internet users, while maintaining the privacy and anonymity of those conforming with generally accepted rules, will be of utmost importance to ensuring the fair and objective governance of the Internet. Major changes within the framework of the global network will be unavoidable. Plus, the creation of successfully working international laws, overseeing the relationships between individuals and/or corporate entities on the Net, needs to be provided with suitable solutions to track, gather evidence, and prove unlawful deeds.
The Internet appears to be at a critical point in its evolution. Online crime has gained previously unseen momentum, amoral marketing campaigns are flooding the network's infrastructure, and at the same time, illegal distribution of copyrighted content is menacingly flourishing, threatening to cause widespread economic damage. Disrespect for creativity and politically-motivated hypocrisy exact urgently needed measures to protect the positive impact of a global community, outreaching humanity's self-imposed boundaries.
