Abstract
Cyberspace is a socio-political and technological domain with unique characteristics. Cyberspace transcends territorial and legal boundaries and is mostly owned and managed by the private sector. The fact that states are unable to secure cyberspace on their own, forces them to develop cooperative mechanisms with other states and international organizations, but also with the private sector. This reality raises a number of issues regarding the most effective model of governance. Viewing cyberspace as a global commons, balancing between state sovereignty and the fragmentation of cyberspace, debating between multilateral governance and multi-stakeholderism and establishing cyber norms, sketch a rather complex picture of cyberspace governance. The cases of ITU, ICANN, IGF and NETmundial offer us a pragmatic insight into the power politics of cyberspace. Cyberspace is a geopolitical arena, where states compete with each other, but are also being challenged by the private sector.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Professor Nazli Choucri, cyberspace is characterized by: temporality (replaces conventional temporality with near instantaneity), physicality (transcends constraints of geography and physical location), permeation (penetrates boundaries and jurisdictions), fluidity (manifests sustained shifts and reconfigurations), participation (reduces barriers to activism and political expression), attribution (obscures identities of actors and links to action) and accountability (bypasses mechanisms of responsibility).
- 2.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that aims to connect various devices or objects—things through wireless and wired connections and create an environment where users can interact at any time with the digital and the physical world. The IoT is mobile, virtual, built on cloud computing and networks of data gathering sensors and is growing rapidly. Mobile applications and sensors are now operating in cars, refrigerators, machinery, medical technology and smart phones.
- 3.
Big Data is a term that refers to large and complex sets of data, both structured and unstructured, that surpasses the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage and analyze. The challenges that Big Data poses, relate to the ‘3Vs’ characteristics: volume, variety and velocity.
- 4.
Dark Web is a part of Internet that is intentionally hidden; it is not indexed by search engines and is inaccessible through standard web browsers. An example of Dark Web is the Tor network that offers its users anonymity by encrypting data and sending them through other routers.
- 5.
Hybrid refers to the combination of two different elements. As Weitzenboeck points out, it does not differentiate between either/or, but combines both-and. In the case of cyberspace governance, hybrid governance would involve both the public and the private sector. It is worth asking whether cyberspace governance could be approached as a case of hybrid governance, where different methods of governance—that surpass the boundaries between the public and the private, the national and the international—could regulate specific areas of cyberspace.
- 6.
For more details see https://www.eff.org/
- 7.
For more details see http://www.itu.int/en/Pages/default.aspx
- 8.
In 2011 China, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan first circulated an International Code of Conduct on Information Security for the consideration of UN member-states. The United States and other western states dismissed the code, with the argument that it would lead to state’s control of Internet and online content. In 2015 China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, have jointly submitted an update of their International Code of Conduct on Information Security to the UN Secretary General, stressing once more the need for new international law for cyberspace.
- 9.
For more details see https://www.icann.org/
- 10.
For more details see http://www.intgovforum.org/
- 11.
For more details see http://netmundial.br/
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Liaropoulos, A.N. (2017). Cyberspace Governance and State Sovereignty. In: Bitros, G., Kyriazis, N. (eds) Democracy and an Open-Economy World Order. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52168-8_2
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