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Edited by Eric Brousseau, Université de Paris IX (Paris-Dauphine), Meryem Marzouki, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, Cécile Méadel, Mines ParisTech. Governance, Regulations and Powers on the Internet - Title page. By Eric Brousseau, Meryem Marzouki. Governance, Regulation and Powers on the Internet - edited by Eric Brousseau April
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Forgot password? Old Password. New Password. Password Changed Successfully Your password has been changed. Returning user. Thus, these are presumed to be separate from the sphere of IG—while the difficulty persists to define what IG actually is. STS scholars tackle this issue by suggesting, in essence, that not only is it not necessary to provide one precise definition and perimeter of IG, but that the assumptions derived from this operation may go to the detriment of apprehending how the practice of IG is enacted, in pervasive, networked, and often invisible ways Ziewitz and Pentzold Throughout the book, DeNardis explores how IG takes shape in the myriad of infrastructures, devices, data fluxes, and technical architectures that—discreet, often invi- sible, yet no less crucial—subtend and build the increasingly public and articulate network of networks.
In doing so, she contributes to unveiling what media and policy maker accounts of IG all too often cause to stay out of the public radar. While pointing out the difficulty of establishing one and only definition of IG, Brousseau et al. They argue that the core issue for scholars of IG at the present stage is to acknowledge not only the plur- ality of these modes of governance but also the fact that they cannot be fully separated.
The contributors to Brousseau et al. At the center of his approach are, indeed, institutions of IG—but explored with an STS- informed toolbox. IG and the STS Toolbox Trying to bring together a young discipline of disciplines and an emerging field of study, STS scholars of IG have a common interest in the epistemo- logical, methodological, and lexical implications of their work.
Indeed, STS provides a vocabulary and a toolbox, both of which confront and dialogue with vocabularies and tools of political and legal sciences on one hand and engineering sciences on the other hand. Yet—and while the methodological toolbox and narrative devices of STS are, unambigu- ously, precious instruments for the author, enabling her to achieve these objectives in a successful manner—this book is not blatantly STS. On its end, The Power of Networks shows how the study of global politics of complex systems and objects—from the environment to nanotechnology, and last but not least, the Internet—has a truly power- ful and innovative methodological instrument in the STS toolbox.
As opposed to concepts such as governance, manage- ment, and control, the concept of ordering is particularly well suited to the analysis of the organizational forms of global politics as assem- blages—hybrid configurations constantly reshaping their purposes and procedures in order to connect and mobilize objects, subjects, and other elements, constituted and positioned relationally, around particular issues.
In so doing, the United Nations contributed to the stabilization of multistakeholderism itself as a structuring dynamic of global politics for the Internet, while experi- menting with hybrid, networked organizational forms and probing the lim- its of its authority in this novel field. From Multi-stakeholderism to Hybrid Forums, and Back The idea that all stakeholders in the Internet should be able to make their voice heard in the shaping of the network of networks, and processes and arenas should be provided for them to do so in a coordinated way Levinson , was first applied for IG in the context of the Internet Governance Forum IGF.
Brousseau et al. Interestingly, Brousseau et al. As she had pointed out in the past, a com- mon misconception that STS can help avoiding is the fact of reducing IG debates to one of its components or arenas; for example, to identify it with the United Nations-promoted processes that have led to the estab- lishment of the IGF—an arena that, even if interesting in its experimenta- tion with innovative governance formats, is arguably not the place where the practice of IG happens DeNardis , Controversy and Negotiation: Performing IG Another common thread, among the STS-informed approaches to IG dis- played in the books, is an examination of the structuring and performative effects that controversies and negotiations have on governance.
Thus, the very processes by which norms evolve—by which they are put to the test, made the subject of conflict and realignment, destabilization and restabilization—becomes central, as they provide different types of guarantees to the various stake- holders. United States Computational Attacks. Helmut K. The United States advocates for internet freedom abroad, for example, while continuously stockpiling digital surveillance and combat techniques for its own security services. Data Localization.
To put it in the words of Ziewitz and Pentzold , STS IG-related contributions present different versions of the worlds in which notions of governance take place. Norms cannot be totally binding. They are permanently negotiated and challenged, hence open to evolutions. Norms becomes references rather than rules.
Thus, the very processes by which norms evolve—by which they are put to the test, made the subject of conflict and realignment, destabilization and restabilization—becomes central, as they provide different types of guarantees to the various stake- holders. In doing so, they also perform trust, both by automating procedures and by keeping track of all actions. Mikkel Flyverbom demonstrates how a good STS book can be written about IG institutions without yielding to the overinstitutionalization of the field.
Yet, institutions are not analyzed as monolithic, impersonal, static entities, but as performative and performed networks. It also emphasizes the extent to which informational and economic intermediaries, despite early understandings and proclaims Barlow , are far from disappeared but, instead, reconfigured in online networked environments. No other network in the past has exhibited all four of these features at the same time, a fact that bestows a unique nature on IG as a field of practice—and poses unprecedented metho- dological challenges for its scholars.
Musiani Information and communication technologies, the Internet first and fore- most, are increasingly mobilized to serve broader economic, political, and military aims, ranging from the theft of strategic data to the hijacking of industrial systems. The rise of techniques, devices, and infrastructures destined to digital espionage, data collection and aggregation, tracking and surveillance is highlighted not only by the recent Snowden revelations but also by the construction and the organization of a dedicated, increas- ingly widespread, and lucrative market.
What lies under the IG label is, in fact, an ensemble of fluidly contoured sociopolitical and sociotechnical controversies, which have in the STS toolbox one of the best opportunities to be thoroughly accounted for, richly described, and extensively ana- lyzed.
As STS scholars dedicate an increasing attention to the IG field, and contribute novel analytical concepts to study it—hybrid forums and con- troversies, in particular—they can build on the significant body of STS lit- erature that provides insights into participation in technology governance, technoscientific controversies, and governance of science and technology Irwin ; Stirling ; Hilgartner These might inform IG issues by looking into similar problems as they relate to different contem- porary, large sociotechnical systems and domains—environment, health, nanotechnologies, and genetic engineering to name but a few.
Thus, they might provide a valuable research opportunity to reconsider some of these concepts—to ultimately ask how IG research can speak back to STS. This could be the Contribution of Compliance Law for the Internet Governance to formulate principles and draw their legal consequences, including institutional ones.
This does not mean being indifferent to the facts. To reason in principle, one must know the facts : Law can be developed only by measuring first and as simply as possible what today and now public Authorities and people face in the "digital world", the question being large because the digital world has digitized the world chapter I. The digital world is born thanks to the principle of freedom, a principle to which there is no question of giving up.
Faced with situations and behaviors that are worrying, even inadmissible, Law has for the moment only " reacted ", either by specific laws, or by Competition Law which remains an Ex Post Law. Thus the only Ex Ante principle is Freedom, some people asking the end of it because humans are " sprayed ", whether it takes the conventional form of freedom of speech or the new form of spraying of the person in data. This seems to be an impasse, since some people propose as the only solution to give up the Principle of Freedom to protect people.
But to this renunciation, it is not necessary to be resolved. Except to enter into a great legal violence, for example breaking the power of these very large digital companies that would have to be dismantled as they have built and make live this extraordinary digital world and participate in the existence that continues of the West in the world.
The contribution of Compliance Law could allow to leave this aporia: instead of aiming at decreasing the power of the companies, it is necessary on the contrary to be based on these chapter II. Indeed, Compliance Law consists in internalizing in crucial operators, whose list is easy to draw up, goals which are concretized thanks to their power information, globalization, technology.
These goals are set by the public Authorities. Normativity being in the goals link between Regulatory Law and Compliance Law , the essential thing is to fix them clearly. The first is of a systemic nature, the digital world here being very similar to the banking and financial system: it is the systemic goal of trust, trust in information, trust in information transmission systems, trust in crucial operators themselves in indifference of their nationality.
It is the articulation of these two Principles - Freedom and Person - that will preserve or restore the common good of trust. In this respect, Law of the European Union has already shown that by still fragmented Compliance sectorial Laws it has gone further than the mechanical concern for the protection of a system developed in the United States Chapter III. A mechanical Law, reduced to empty "regulations" automatically applied to a system, is a dead Law.
US Compliance Law can give that impression… Through the European Banking Union and the three banking, insurance and financial European Regulators, the European Union managed, without links with a State, to express a systemic goal of general protection of people, internalized in crucial digital operators. This is why it is necessary to take American Law only as initial model; but it should not also be taken as an enemy: Europe does not have to be in defense, while the digital world lends itself so well to the Renaissance.
And it is European Union Law that has set the example through the case law then the Regulation on the circulation of data and the protection of the persons "concerned" by them by internalizing in companies a concern little present in the American techniques of Compliance: the first concern of the Person GDPR. In this, Law finds its primary object: the life of human beings.
The Law of the Union already has the lineaments of this Principle Ex Ante of the Principle of Person articulating with the Principle of Liberty whose excesses are already sanctioned Ex Post by Competition Law, but this cannot suffice : the Ex Ante of Compliance Law aims for a double systemic prevention, the prevention of the risk of loss of confidence in the contents and the prevention of attacks on the Person which lead to a loss of confidence in the operators.
These two pillars Ex Ante are still inadequately formulated in a simple and general way: it is the contribution of Compliance Law that to do it so that it applies across the entire digital world and the digitized world and the respect for freedom which must not be lost and respect for the person to be won.
In this, this constituent principle of the Person must stop the effectiveness of foreign mechanical rules, including in the process mechanics of compliance process.