Internet Governance and its role

Today internet has adapted the form of daily lives of people; it basically has reached the level where people do everything in it, from expressing their feelings to their businesses. To an extent it has adapted as a personalized and daily commodity which is more used on daily basis just like any other basic commodity. From the personal information to the financial information to the deep secrets in the form of emails are all stored in the form of strings and variable where the security lies at risk of getting exploited due to lack of proper security policies and mechanism.

With the booming of internet, it has expanded the horizon in facilitating and introducing new services making it possible to virtually do anything that can be thought of whereas on contrary; the internet has also developed various threats and weakness. These loop holes are manipulated by wrong doers in exploiting the innocent which are further mentioned below.

More or less, policies and mechanism have been developed but are very limited and prepared according to the feasibility of developed nation where the developing and underdeveloped countries lies at the stake of uncertainty. This gap between the developed counties and remaining has resulted in a conflict where rules and regulation remains stagnant to each other giving space for externalities and irregularities. This situation has led into manipulation and exploitation where child abuse, cyber crimes, identity theft, copyrights issue, hacking etc are in the trend of rise. Whether it’s about hacking or child exploitation or pornography, internet security today is the most vulnerable issue whish demand a proper mechanism and regulation. Due to absence of standardization in policies and mechanism the externalities are materializing to a new level where it’s establishing itself as threat to everyone in one or the other form. However, the issue of security is high on alert where especially developing and underdeveloped countries are suffering the consequence due to the laps of standard security policy. The time demands standardization in every aspect of internet where growth and further prospect surely depends on that.

According to Jeremy Malcolm, “Multi-stakeholder governance is a fresh approach to the development of public policy, bringing together governments, the private sector and civil society in partnership. The movement towards this new governance paradigm has been most marked in areas involving global networks of stakeholders, too intricate to be represented by governments alone. Nowhere is this better illustrated than on the Internet, where it is an inherent characteristic of the network that laws, and the conduct to which those laws are directed, will cross national borders.”

Thus, the concept of Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a dynamic approach which gives opportunities to multi stake holders in overcoming the various aspects of net neutrality and digital divide. It also helps in further accessing to establish a uniform mechanism addressing the needs of all the stakeholders from developed countries to developing and underdeveloped countries. Especially the vacuum between the developed and developing /underdeveloped countries needs a certain platform which would address their problems and issues. It would further help in highlighting the corporate or social responsibility prioritizing the rights of information access by completely abolishing discrimination. I strongly believe that IGF is an effective tool which needs to be reviewed as a weapon against irregularities and externalities where the developed nation should endorse it for future growth and prospects.

Advantages of IGF

* A board platform to address issues and problems
* A standard policy and mechanism to address the problems of world over
* Control over digital divide and net neutrality
*No bias system
*Equal opportunity of business and exposure
* Bilateral relationship
* Effectiveness in growth and monitoring of internet
* Issue like pornography, cyber crimes, hacking and exploitation can be easily overcome
* Better security policies

Disadvantages of IGF

* Hard to control and monitor due to number of countries
* Hard for developing and under developed to keep up with developed countries in terms of technology and manpower
* Standard policies means competition which would be hard for underdeveloped and developing countries

Shreedeep Rayamajhi