The de-Americanization of the Internet

[Commentary] America’s dominance of the Internet has peaked.

America’s creation of the Internet, and the phenomenal innovation and benefits it has spawned, has changed the world. However, now that the Internet is maturing, the world is changing the Internet. Many fear this natural evolution as the “balkanization” of the free and open Internet. Some warn it’s a “splinter net” caused by the NSA-Snowden effect. Others in Congress call it classic “protectionism” against American Internet companies. Something big is going on. At core, it’s the de-Americanization of the Internet. The rest of the world is vigorously asserting itself in most every aspect of the Internet: governance, oversight, operation, and benefits, in order to make the Internet more global and rest-of-world balanced, rather than American-dominated. The Internet largely has been an American one-way street for governing control, access to private information, and profitability. Now the ongoing waves of Snowden revelations have catalyzed the rest-of-world to seek a more two-way global Internet street.

[Cleland is President of Precursor and Chairman of NetCompetition, a pro-competition e-forum supported by broadband interests.]