Internet users per 100 population members and GDP per capita for selected countries.
Unknown to the vast online majority, the internet got democratised on Saturday. The control over the key technical backend functions of the internet, like domain management and IP address allocation, shifted from the US government to aninternational "multi-stakeholder" body comprising academia, civil society, governments, and the tech community.
The change will have no bearing on how we use the internet. Our mails will still come the way they do. Your social mediaupdates will still go up as before. But the change is significant as it brings other players such as governments from countries other than the US and civil society actors in the decision-making process behind key internet functions.
The intent of this transition was expressed nearly two decades ago. Active work for it began in 2014. After several hurdles, political controversies, and a last-minute lawsuit heard in a Galveston, Texas court on Friday (local time), the process has finally come to fruition.
At the core of this change lies the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a US-based non-profit body which coordinates web addresses across the internet. Its core functions of IP allocation, and the management of the "root zone", often described as the master phone book of the internet, falls under the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority or IANA. Until Friday, the IANA was under contract with the US government's National Telecommunications Information Authority (NTIA), under which it would have to seek its nod to carry out its tasks. Now the contract has been allowed to expire, and US government doesn't watch over it anymore.
"The transition will help to ensure the continuation of a single, open Internet that users around the world can rely on for years to come," says Steve Crocker, chair of the ICANN board of directors. Instead of the US government, it will now be governed by a set of new bylaws developed over the last two years. According to the NTIA, this process had stakeholders "spending more than 26,000 hours on the proposal, exchanging more than 33,000 messages on mailing lists, holding more than 600 meetings and calls, and incurring millions of dollars in
legal fees."
One can continue watching cat videos online the way one does. "The transition is just transferring the oversight role from the US government to a global multi-stakeholder community. The IANA Functions are only technical in nature, and will not affect content online," explains Aarti Bhavana of the Center for Communication Governance at National Law University in the capital.
Bhavana, also an active observer of what is called the multi-stakeholder process, points out that India's contribution to theICANN and internet governance remains largely unchanged, although the structure of the organisation is definitely more democratic and inclusive.
"India can continue to participate along with the other countries in the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) to advise the ICANN board on public policy issues. Other Indian stakeholders can participate in the bottom-up multi-stakeholder policy development at ICANN, by joining technical stakeholder groups (such as the Registries Stakeholder Group or the Registrar's Stakeholder Group). This remains unchanged by the transition. It only ensures a more multi-stakeholder system, and India can participate as one of those stakeholders," she says.
