[Facil] Conférence: Marc Raboy - Who controls the Internet? The Politics of Internet Governance ?

[Yannick Delbecque]

Marc Raboy - Who controls the Internet? The Politics of Internet Governance ?

Résumé: The recent UN World Summit on the Information Society  
highlighted the complexity of what on the surface appears to be a  
very simple and yet unanswerable question: Who controls the Internet?  
A multistakeholder Working Group on Internet Governance, set up under  
the patronage of Kofi Annan, produced a report defining the  
parameters of the topic, developing a list of public policy areas  
that needed to be addressed, and suggesting various scenarios for  
global Internet governance (see www.wgig.org). Then the politicians  
took over. Headlines and editorials in the world press in October and  
November 2005 skimmed the surface of the issue, framing it as a power  
struggle between the US government and all the rest, with calls for  
multilateralism coming from quarters as disparate as the European  
Union, China and Iran. The issue is much more complex however.  
Internet governance is not the monopoly of governments, but involves  
a complex interaction of influencing actors including not only  
government but also corporate investors, computer scientists and  
engineers, and ordinary users who infuse the technology with social  
meaning. The immediate upshot of the WSIS has been creation of a  
global multistakeholder Internet Governance Forum, which is due to  
hold its first meeting in Athens in March 2006. The terms of  
reference and composition of the IGF are still being worked out. My  
talk will consider the politics surrounding the prospects of the IGF,  
and its short- and long-term implications for Internet governance  
worldwide.

Conférance donnée le vendredi 3 février, 15h30, McConnell 013 à l'Université McGill.