The Battle for the Global Internet

The next six months could be an inflection point for the way the internet functions at home and around the world.

From the physical infrastructure to the services that run on top of it, the internet has become a major focal point of debate around the world. Over the next few years, we will witness a wide array of policies that dictate the way these infrastructures and services operate introduced at the national, regional, and global levels. These policies that will shape the evolution and future of the internet.

Globally, internet governance is split into three camps. On one end of the spectrum, there are proponents of an internet driven by ideals of freedom and openness, whose domestic governance usually manifests in an equitable multistakeholder approach. On the other end, authoritarians see the internet as a threat to regime security and opt for a sovereign and controlled model for the internet, where the state is the primary force in governance over the infrastructure and services. In the middle, there are the undecideded—some unsure of which direction to go, and others seeking a third way.

The coming months are filled with important processes that could play a significant role in steering the future the internet towards one of these poles, including the Internet Governance Forum, the ITU Plenipotentiary, ICANN63, the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, and more. Some of these processes will pose significant opportunity to codify principles of freedom, openness, interoperability, security, and resilience, while others pose serious challenges to proponents of the same.

Join New America, DiploFoundation, and the ISOC-DC at noon on Thursday, September 27 to discuss what the coming months might mean for internet governance.

Participants:

Dr. Jovan Kurbalija, @JovanKurbalija
Executive Director, Secretariat of the UN Secretary General's High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation

Robert Morgus
Sr. Policy Analyst & Deputy Director, FIU-New America C2B Partnership

Becky Burr
Deputy General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer, Neustar

Shane Tews, @ShaneTews
Co-Chair Internet Governance Forum USA

Moderator:

Dr. Tereza Horejsova, @TerezaHorejsova
Project Development Director, DiploFoundation

More panelists to be announced soon!

Lunch will be served.

Follow the conversation online using #GlobalInternet and following@NewAmCyber, @DiplomacyEdu, and @ISOCDC.