Who Governs Cyberspace? Internet Governance and Power Structures in Digital Networks

Abstract

The Internet Governance debate has, for a long time, been influenced by a well-defined characterization of information networks. The depiction of a decentralized network, governed on a consensual basis by distributed forms of authority, has therefore focused, as a consequence, little attention on the coding and configuration strategies of the network architecture that is implemented in a conflictual scenario by a set of parties whose interests are rarely explicated in the internet governance debate or in institutional plans and policies inspired by it. It follows that some important structures of network government are not publicly recognized as constitutive places where processes of economic, political and social shaping on technology application occur. On the contrary this chapter will be dedicated to the analysis on those geo-strategic issues relating to international flows of data and to remote control activities deployed by a small group of software houses and hardware manufacturers.