No single country can dictate laws on the internet as control stifles innovation. The internet is a multi-stakeholder platform and not for any single government to control, Olivier Leblond, chair, At-large Advisory Committee (ALAC) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the non-profit organisation responsible for management of domain name and IP address spaces, said here on Tuesday.
Speaking to The Hindu at the Bharathidasan Institute of Management, where he delivered a lecture on ‘Permissionless innovation,' Mr. Leblond affirmed that ICANN would strive to maintain the internet as a multi-stakeholder platform comprising governments, businesses, non-governmental organisations and users in light of proposed legislation for internet control in the U.S and other nations.
The United Nations supported Internet Governance Forum (IGF) should be the forum for all discussion of regulation, and development of internet standards should be based on a multi-stakeholder policy. Replacing it with governmental control would amount to killing of consensus.
“Governments already have their say through the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) of the ICANN. If we had let governments control internet growth, there would have been no growth at all,” Mr. Leblond said. “You cannot swat a fly with a machine gun,” he quipped.
Citing the example of Wikileaks, Mr. Leblond said government attempts to shut down websites would fail as it was impossible to smother something so worldwide and international. With technology being powerful, information that is suppressed would always find a way to pop out somewhere. Elaborating on the role of the internet in West Asia, he said the internet was a catalyst but not a cause for uprisings akin to Tahrir Square protest.
When the government pulled the plug on the internet in Egypt, businesses in the country lost an estimated 90 million US dollars. Besides it created a reverse effect as those who could not follow events on Facebook and Twitter flocked to the actual site of demonstrations.
The barriers for internet growth are systemic as existing laws and processes are designed to safeguard what is currently in place. Loosening rather than restraining regulations would encourage innovation, he told students.
Similarly no single entity be it businesses or users can control the internet as the former would focus on maximising profits and the latter would demand everything free.
New business models
Acknowledging that a panacea should be found for the losses suffered by the music and movie industry with content being illegally downloaded and shared, he stressed on the need to explore new business models, he said.
