Internet Governance Outlook 2014: Good News, Bad News, No News?

What does the crystal ball say for the Internet in 2014? Here are three scenarios for what could happen with the global Internet Governance Eco-System in the coming 12 months:

Three Scenarios

In the worst case scenario the Internet gets more and more fragmented and re-nationalized. A growing number of governments start to define a "national Internet segment" and develop policies to surveil, censor and control access to and use of the Internet. National firewalls will separate the "domestic Internet" from the global Internet and an exit and entrance regime into networks is introduced where users need passwords, handed out by governmental authorities on an annual basis, to go from one domain to another. Political battles among governments over critical Internet resources, cybersecurity and human rights will dominate international discussions, no global agreement can be reached, the voice of non-governmental stakeholders is ignored and the mandate of the Internet Governance Forum is not renewed.

In the best case scenario we will have a more secure Internet at the end of 2014 with more freedoms, more privacy and more involved stakeholders which enhance their cooperation on equal footing in a further growing global Internet Governance Eco-System. Surveillance is put under the rule of law and restricted on the basis of proportionality to cases where clear evidence is available for illegal activities. The next billion of Internet users will go online. We will see a new wave of innovative services and applications where objects are linked to the Internet creating new market opportunities, jobs and spaces for all kind of commercial, cultural and social activities improving the quality of life of billions of users around the globe.

Between the two scenarios 2014 could also become just another year in stumbling forward, as the former US president Bill Clinton has once described Internet Governance. We will see hot political debates with numerous papers and controversial proposals but little outcome. Some small steps could be taken as the successful start of some new top level domains, some arrangements on confidence building measures to enhance cybersecurity or a global agreement on some high level non-binding basic principles for Internet policy making. But a lot of other open and orphan issues under discussion will remain unresolved and postponed into the year 2015.

Internet Governance Eco-System as "Rainforest" of the 21st Century

An important role will play how the numerous involved governmental and non-governmental actors understand the nature of the complexity of the Internet Governance Eco-System. Already the terminology "Internet Governance Eco-System" signals that the Internet is not just "another policy issue" which after the revelations of Edward Snowden has been pushed now for policy decision makers from "low priority" to "high priority". The problem is much more complex.

The Internet is not a "single issue" which needs to be regulated in one way or another. The Internet, as it has evolved over half of a century, has penetrated all areas of the political, economic, cultural and social life around the globe. It constitutes more and more the environment in which individuals and institutions do live and learn, do their business, buy and sell, make love and fun and have all kind of individual or collective activities. The Internet Governance Eco-System constitutes to a high degree the virtual environment of the 21st century. Life without the Internet is meanwhile unthinkable for the young generation which are the decision makers of tomorrow. From the 20th century we know about the consequences of the pollution of our natural environment. The lesson learned from those disasters is that we should be very careful with all kinds of pollutions and keep our real and virtual environment as healthy as possible.

The Internet Governance Eco-System can be compared a little bit to the rainforest. In the rainforest an uncountable number of diverse plants and animals live together in a very complex system. In the "virtual rainforest" we have also an endless and growing diversity of networks, services, applications, regimes and other properties which co-exist in a mutual interdependent mechanism of communication, coordination and collaboration. One thing which can be learnt is that the rainforest as a whole is not managable. It can be neither governed nor controlled, but it can be damaged and destroyed. In the Internet Governance Eco-System many players with very different legal status operate on many different layers, on local, national, regional and international levels, driven by technical innovation, user needs, market opportunities and political interests.

As a result we see a very dynamic process where from a political-legal perspective a broad variety of different regulatory, co-regulatory or self-regulatory regimes emerge, co-exist and complement or conflict each other. The system as a whole is decentralized, diversified and has no central authority. However, within the various subsystems there is an incredible broad variety of different sub-mechanisms which range from hierarchical structures under single or inter-governmental control to non-hierarchical networks based on self-regulatory mechanisms by non-governmental groups with a wide range of co-regulatory arrangements in between where affected and concerned stakeholders from governments, private sector, civil society and technical community are working hand in hand.