EU Pushes to Globalize Internet Governance
The European Union’s executive body is raising pressure to reduce U.S. influence over the Internet’s architecture amid what it called weakened confidence in the network’s governance after revelations of U.S. surveillance.
Commenting on this, Director of the Hariri Institute, Professor Azer Bestavros noted that “This has been in the making for a while, reflecting the global nature of the Internet, compared to what it was only 20 years ago. The latest NSA revelations are providing more ammunition for this tug of war.” He also added that once we go down “governance” (whether by US or EU or by each individual country such as China and Iran), “it won’t be long until the Internet will evolve to have national boundaries (a la customs, import/export rules, etc. What governments don’t seem to get is that unlike “traditional territories” the virtual nature of the Internet will always defeat whatever rules are put on it. So, it is really pointless to worry about whether or not the control of things like domain names is overseen by US or EU or UN.