Internet content regulation and governance: an annotated bibliography

Regulating and Governing Internet

Regulating and Governing the Internet

Annotated Bibliography

The focus of this paper is to provide the annotated bibliography of the following articles: Nair, a. (2007). Internet Content Regulation: Is a Global Community Standard a Fallacy or the Only Way Out? International Review of Law Computers & Technology. 21 (1): 15 -- 25. The author argues that internet undoubtedly contains valuable amount of information and resources, which make the internet to become a way of life. Despite its major importance, the internet also has its dark side.

Policy makers are facing challenges to reach global consensus on the strategy to regulate the children phonographic. Typically, the borderless nature of the internet has been a major factor leading to the difficulties in regulating the content on the internet to protect the children from the phonographic content. The United States has made an effort to regulate the internet content by passing the Child Online Protection Act 1998 (COPA) and Communications Decency Act 1996 (CDA), however, these regulations failed to pass a constitutional tests in the court of law. The author suggests that internet needs to be regulated from many layers to protect children from the phonographic content.

2. Choi, C.J. Kim, S.W. & Yu, S. (2009). Global Ethics of Collective Internet Governance: Intrinsic Motivation and Open Source Software. Journal of Business Ethics. 90:523 -- 531. The authors argue that the ethical governance in the global internet is accelerating within a global phenomenon. A key paradox of a global internet is that it allows decision makers and individual to co-exist among one another making OSS (Open source software) communities to become an accelerating global phenomenon. Typically, OSS refers to a group of software assisting in code sharing among corporate users. Despite the importance of OSS, the motivation behind the OSS has generated wide debate among policy makers and researchers. Analysis of the OSS communities with the viewpoint of knowledge creation, collective internet governance and intrinsic motivation make the authors to conclude that OSS has a fundamental implication on the governance and business ethics in the 21st century.

3.

Mansell, R. (2011). New visions, old practices: Policy and regulation in the Internet era. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies. 25(1): 19-32. The author focuses on the interest of corporate organizations on the internet evolution and the roles of governments in regulating various services and infrastructure in the internet. The paper highlights the alliances between the neoliberal political and economic agenda in the internet regulation. Typically, neoliberal strategies alongside the private organizations are discussed to manage information diversity in the internet. However, author reveals that there is a conflict of interest in the internet regulation because the internet regulation will have an effect on the availability of the open network.

Bottom-up approach to Internet Regulation

The impressive growth of the internet usage within the business and non-business environment necessitates the need to regulate the internet usage. However, there is a divergence of opinion on the appropriate strategy to regulate the internet usage. While some group support traditional top-down approach, some group support bottom-up regulatory approach. The bottom -- up approach is a regulatory system where the private sectors define the rules to regulate the internet usage. The present regulatory option is being determined by the bottom-up regulatory approach; however, the side effect of this approach is that one party could exploit the other party in the transaction. This paper believes that top-down approach is to be used in collaboration with the bottom-up regulatory approach because the top -down system is defined by the government agency and enforced by the court. The private organizations might use the internet regulation to exploit consumer during transactions if leaving the internet regulation entirely to bottom-up system.

Value of ICANN and its impact on the Current Internet Worldwide.

The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is a private, non-profit organization established under the California state law in 1998, and ICANN has become an effective tool in the internet governance. Typically, ICANN manages the allocation of internet protocol address, and coordinates the unique IP address across the world to facilitate the internet coordination. The ICANN also assists in allocating unique identifiers to facilitate the identification of internet globally. Thus, ICANN has assisted in the deploying DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) that facilitate safe and secured operation of internet globally.