Critical Internet Resources- contentious global policy issue

The benefits of Internet in this era are extolled. It has made life simpler, has augmented connectivity between citizens, organizations and nations and is no doubt a critical socio-economic enabler, which has deep impact on the economy, social state, cultural contours, law and order and the fabric of the nation itself.

As major economic driver, it provides banking and other financial services to world's business, facilitates exchange of ideas and knowledge between citizens from across the globe, provides a global market place on which majority businesses run and is rapidly replacing the conventional print and visual media. Internet is now ubiquitous in today's world.

Its impact is only going to amplify as we move forward, especially when more things will get connected and start ‘talking' with one another, with ‘Internet of Things' becoming a reality. Numerous business models that thrive on Internet surface daily, with unique service propositions. Governments too, are using this medium to for providing e-governance services, spreading their reach to masses in a quicker and reliable fashion. It is fast, and steadily, bridging the digital divide that separates developed countries from developing and underdeveloped countries.

Underneath this one giant global network called Internet, is a collection of networks that uses standard protocols for communications. Massive optical fibres, satellite links, radio connections and mobile telephony links comprise the base communication. These are operated by government and private sector. Over the underlying infrastructure comprising technical gears and equipments, different nodes are connected and that is essentially what constitutes ‘Internet', over which communication takes place.

The growth of the Internet, in large measures, can be attributed to standards that have evolved in the academic world initially, followed by the private sector participation in forums like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF); root names and servers control and operations by Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA) under the control of a professor in a university. The evolution of the Internet has helped it to become the communications backbone of the world. This seamless connectivity works because there is a way of assigning names to numbers, resolving them through use of DNS servers, and routing them correctly to their destinations using number of intermediate nodes and routers.

The Internet became global around 1997 and these functions were transferred to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which currently performs the IANA functions. It is overseen by the US Commerce Department's entity National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA), through a contract. All of the technical functions namely: domain name servers, addresses, routing, and registries etc. were performed by the IANA historically, and the technical standards were developed by the IETF from the beginning. Since then, critical components of Internet such as domain names and addresses, root server management, standards and protocols etc. remain the core of Internet Governance (IG).

The current method of IG, and thus control over critical Internet resources, has been raising many questions. The arrangement tends to give an impression of unilateral control by the US government in managing the critical resources of the Internet.

International community is seized upon the issues of lack of accountability of root zone operators, location of majority root servers confined to a particular region, concerns over allocation policies for IP addresses and domain names, substantially higher connectivity costs in developing countries located far from internet backbones, lack of multilateral mechanisms to ensure network stability and security, lack of effective mechanisms to prevent and prosecute Internet crimes and spam, inconsistent application of privacy and data-protection rights, absence of global standards for consumer rights over the Internet, insufficient progress towards multilingualism, and insufficient capacity-building in developing countries.

Recent studies have shown how the Internet and its management have become integral to the foreign policy, defence and security interests of a nation. Nations states see the collusion between US government and institutions such as ICANN as unilateral control of the Internet by the US government.

The world claims equal rights in the governance of the Internet - and all related matters such as policy, technical, oversight etc. Countries such as China, Russia etc. are known to exercising complete control over the Internet within their ‘territorial boundaries' in name of ‘Sovereign Rights of Nations'. Brazil has too moved a resolution requiring setting up of Internet Infrastructure within national borders, amidst news reports of US government's NSA breaking into servers of Google and Yahoo, by virtue of them being located within US boundaries. Contrary to pre-Snowden conditions, relevant stakeholders are now showing the eagerness to make things happen. Suddenly, the majority voices have flipped view from "If-it's-not-broken-why-fix-it" to "let's-control-it-before-damages-are-irreparable".

With ten out of total of thirteen root servers are located on the US soil, the globalized nature of Internet, and autonomy of ICANN in managing it, is challenged. The new gTLD allocation scheme of ICANN has been criticized by many over high cost of registration and maintenance, and lack of complete transparency over allocation. Global distribution of IPv4 address blocks was also considered ‘unjustifiable' with largest chunk with the US. This also followed in the IPv6 allocation, with US getting maximum share. Some experts attribute these to the fact that the Internet was born out of the US and that ICANN is incorporated in California under US laws and that Internet population in still the highest the US, notwithstanding that India would be the largest Internet user base in times to come, with exponential growth.

ICANN is trying to address these issues through different strategies & initiatives such as opening new offices in Singapore and Istanbul, setting up of ‘strategic panel' to explore new governance models, considering re-allocations of root servers to some other global body where other nation states have equal say, developing bottom up multi stakeholder model for all technical, policy and administrative decisions, and advocacy in registering itself as a non-governmental body in Geneva, among others things. Global bodies, such as UN are also seeking proactive role in IG. Such multinational arrangements are also seen as one of the alternatives to current arrangement that could help stabilize the IG mechanisms - else the fear of balkanization of the Internet looms large.

Although there is sign of reform of the global institutions managing the resources, much needs to be done to for an equitable IG ecosystem. So far no international treaty that governs digital co-existence is in place. A need to evolve a global framework, with multi stakeholder participation from governments, international bodies, industry, civil society, academia, media and end users are important to ensure governance of critical Internet resources, vital to smooth functioning of Internet.