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Who governs the Internet? The worldwide web makes international communication and research easier and more effective than ever. But can a tool invented, developed and largely controlled in the world’s most powerful nation really be anything other than dominated by America?

Internet governance is the focus of much research in the Faculty of Social Sciences. Media Studies Professor Richard Collins points out that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which controls the Internet “name space” – that is the addressing system made up of domain names like .uk and .org -  is established under US law and a Memorandum of Understanding with the US Department of Commerce. This makes the Internet different to other systems of international communication, like the post and the telephone, which are organized under international treaties and United Nations agencies.

Writing in the OU’s Social Sciences Faculty journal about the recent United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which took place in Tunis in 2005, Collins argued that the Internet isn’t different only in the dominance of a single country governing a global communication resource but also because “development of the Internet has been based on non-hierarchical governance where networks have been of vital importance”. A Workshop on Global Internet Governance (WGIG) set up at the first part of the summit (in Geneva in 2003) drew in civil society participation but, says Professor Collins: “Opening the door to civil society and business left open the question of how such communities of interest should organize themselves for democracy. How should they deliberate? How are their boundaries set? How should representatives be accountable?”

Few solutions are readily apparent, reports Professor Collins. “There are undoubtedly grounds for questioning the legitimacy of civil society participation in WSIS and WGIG, but it may be thought there are also grounds also to question the legitimacy of states’ participation,” he writes. “Some of the states most vociferous in their criticism of US hegemony score considerably lower than the USA in democratic legitimacy. And there is some absurdity in a system of political representation that awards similar status to Tuvalu (population 11,636) and China (population 1,306,313,812)”.

Summing up on the outcomes of the WSIS, Richard Collins concluded that“On balance the status quo is friendly to freedom of expression” and that whilst some evidence of the “arrogance of the great powers was in evidence” so too was there “competition between different systems, institutions and philosophies of governance all, in varying degrees, of imperfect legitimacy” making the WSIS and WGIG a fascinating case study for all interested in evolving systems of governance.

The, still unresolved, arguments over Internet governance which took place at the Summit make clear that “As the UN acknowledged in its ‘We the Peoples Report’ of 2004, ‘Global governance is no longer the sole domain of governments’.”