An empire entire of itself? Standards, domain names and government

Abstract

Introducing Internet standard setting In this chapter, I consider issues and institutions uniquely designed for the Internet, to provide co- or self-regulatory tools to solve unique problems, and the effect of both technological and government regulation thereon. Though predominantly technical in character, as seen in the previous chapter with UGC, standards define content interoperability. I therefore consider: first, core standards made in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF); second, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and its standard setting, including the attempt to introduce labelling standards to enable end-users to filter Internet content; and finally, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which allocates ‘addresses’ for Internet sites and claims an entirely technical character unrelated to, and entirely agnostic to, content, and the country registrar for the UK, Nominet. The ability of content providers to offer end-users a service ultimately rests on conformance with IETF standards. Understanding the importance of IETF as the basic technical rule-maker of the Internet, and its coordination mechanisms through ISOC to ICANN, and through participation to W3C and content, services and applications, is necessary before considering other SROs.