Moving Beyond WCIT: The Necessity of the Multistakeholder Model

The International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai has concluded after a busy two weeks. While we had hoped for a more constructive outcome, we look forward to participating in ongoing discussions from the conference. Pundits are weighing in as industry experts are continuing to deconstruct the conclusions of the conference. The lack of consensus from the conference underscores the important fact that the Internet isn’t owned by anybody.

There isn’t an ‘off’ switch and there isn’t a set of standards that anyone can dictate. Over time, ‘multistakeholder’ groups, like ICANN, IESG, IANA, IETF, and IAB, have stepped in to take over ‘management’ of certain aspects of the Internet, however these organizations achieved that management as part of social contract, not as mandate. If they cease to provide value to the Internet, they will no longer be listened to or be taken seriously. No one group dictates the whole Internet. Instead the Internet is made up of a whole series of conversations, with anybody who has a stake able to join in. That means businesses, engineers, security minded people, governments, civil society groups, and users. The quality of their engagement and arguments dictate whether their ideas and work are accepted or rejected. Many countries face development challenges in bringing the full benefits of the Internet to their citizens. If you take what they were saying at face value, a lot of those countries tried to use the ITU process to try to get that help. But the ITU isn’t a place where Internet governance should work. The Internet should remain compartmentalized and the domain of expert multistakeholder groups working on a lot of different parts. That doesn’t mean those governments, and perhaps even groups like the ITU itself can’t engage directly in various multistakeholder processes, where the effectiveness of their work and its benefit to the Internet will dictate its usefulness. Are existing multistakeholder groups working well? There’s definitely room for improvement, but I’m reminded of this quote: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” – Winston Churchill. Certainly there’s room for improvement and there always will be – as is true with most things.