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Some governments are pushing to be more than mere stakeholders and instead to have the final say in important matters. China and Russia want the United Nations General Assembly to adopt an International Code of Conduct for Information Security. India, Brazil and South Africa have called for a new global body to control the internet. Other countries want to give a UN agency, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a supervisory role. The upcoming renegotiation of the treaty that defines the ITUs competences is regarded as an opportunity to push this agenda. Even Western governments, which usually favour the multi-stakeholder system, would like to rein in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), whose board decides which top-level domains to add (such as .com or .biz). ICANN has just started the process to introduce a lot more high-level domains (expect to see .pepsi and .lawyer), which is why governments are increasingly nervous about the bodys sometimes opaque decision-making processand why some would like to have a veto over controversial new domains (such as .jesus, .gay and .tibet).
Governments have a role to playsuch as defending their citizens interestsbut they should not be allowed the final say over such matters, for creeping state control would suffocate the internet. Imagine if the ITU, a classic example of a sluggish international bureaucracy with antiquated diplomatic rituals, or indeed any other inter-governmental organisation, had been put in charge of the nascent global network two decades ago. Would it have produced a world-changing fount of innovation? We think not.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) on Thursday overturned a Belgian court's ruling requiring Internet service providers (ISPs) to snoop on users' private data, in a major victory for the ISPs and digital rights advocates over content owners worried about online copyright infringement. The ECJ, the European Union's highest court, struck down an injunction by the Belgian national courts that required Benelux telecom provider Scarlet to monitor copyright infringement among its users. SABAM, the Belgian association of authors, composers, and publishers, sought the injunction to protect the royalties of its members.
The high court ruled that the injunction failed to comply with an EU ban on "imposing a general monitoring obligation" on ISPs and with the requirement to strike a fair balance between the right to intellectual property, freedom to conduct business and, in a key decision, "the right to protection of personal data and the freedom to receive or impart information." The ruling will boost legal protections for both ISPs and individual users across Europe, since as an EU court, the ECJ's ruling has consequences for laws across all 27 EU member states.
"In general terms with ECJ judgments, the way they are interpreted by national courts is always a question," says Richard Dissman, an expert in contentious intellectual property issues at Munich law firm Bird and Bird. Mr. Dissman says the ECJ ruling is not the end of the matter, but that it does form a cornerstone for future dealings. "My experience with other ECJ judgments is the rights owners will find a way to live with it. They will certainly lobby for new legislation, arguing it's a pirates' charter, but they will also find ways to work with this regime."
Victor Vazquez-Lopez, senior legal counsel with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), says the ECJ ruling underscores current legal procedure. "There is a very basic principle which derives from our 1996 internet treaties [ ] that Internet intermediaries [such as ISPs and websites that host user-uploaded content] are not directly liable, but that does not mean they do not have an indirect liability and several countries have legislated on that basis, such as the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998 and the EU's [2000] Electronic Commerce Directive."
'A confirmation of longstanding principles'
Anyone really want the government, any government, control the internet?
Some governments are pushing to be more than mere stakeholders and instead to have the final say in important matters. China and Russia want the United Nations General Assembly to adopt an International Code of Conduct for Information Security. India, Brazil and South Africa have called for a new global body to control the internet. Other countries want to give a UN agency, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a supervisory role. The upcoming renegotiation of the treaty that defines the ITUs competences is regarded as an opportunity to push this agenda. Even Western governments, which usually favour the multi-stakeholder system, would like to rein in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), whose board decides which top-level domains to add (such as .com or .biz). ICANN has just started the process to introduce a lot more high-level domains (expect to see .pepsi and .lawyer), which is why governments are increasingly nervous about the bodys sometimes opaque decision-making processand why some would like to have a veto over controversial new domains (such as .jesus, .gay and .tibet).
Governments have a role to playsuch as defending their citizens interestsbut they should not be allowed the final say over such matters, for creeping state control would suffocate the internet. Imagine if the ITU, a classic example of a sluggish international bureaucracy with antiquated diplomatic rituals, or indeed any other inter-governmental organisation, had been put in charge of the nascent global network two decades ago. Would it have produced a world-changing fount of innovation? We think not.
Internet governance: In praise of chaos | The Economist
Anyone really want the government, any government, control the internet?
