Global Standard Setting in Internet Governance

Abstract

Abstract The standards development organization’s (SDO) role in Internet governance is notable given its central place in society. The bulk of decision-making for the Internet takes place in technical standards fora, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which have no formal state or public sector body membership. Recent years have seen a significant degree of spill-over of highly politicized policy areas such as data protection, digital rights management, security, and bandwidth and spectrum to SDOs, policies which were formerly domains of the nation state. SDOs are grappling with the efficiency of cloud storage, limits of spectrum use, and autonomy and management of devices. Security questions abound as demonstrated by the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Snowden revelations. The book breaks new ground by exploring decision-making within SDOs. It provides an invaluable insight into a world, which, although highly technical, affects the way in which citizens live and work on a daily basis. The work stands out from existing literature on Internet governance, which focuses on international organizations such as the United Nations (UN), the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). As such, it adds significantly to the trajectory of research that explores the relationship between politics and protocols. It explains the interplay between different interests and whether civil society and other actors are able to defend and promote citizens’ rights within SDOs. As such, it contributes to knowledge about how the public interest is promoted.