Oxford Expert Calls for Increased Government Involvement

Programme for Comparative Media Law and Policy

An international summit of experts on Internet regulation will meet tomorrow in Oxford amid calls for increased government regulation of the Internet.

Oxford Universityís Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy is convening an international conference in collaboration with the Oxford Internet Institute, entitled ëThe Politics of Code: Shaping the Future of the Next Internetí. Participants will discuss critical decisions arising around the architecture of the Internet and their implications for the future of the Internet. High profile speakers - among them Professor Larry Lessig, renowned thinker on Cyberlaw and Esther Dyson,founding chairman of ICANN - will be among the speakers. Participants will consider how seemingly narrow technical developments can have broad social implications.

Damian Tambini, Director of the Programme for Comparative Media Law and Policy and an organiser of the conference, will argue that ìThe internet is far too important to be left to regulate itself. The computer industry is considering the development of systems that will have a significant impact upon our fundamental freedoms to communicate and express our opinions. This has implications for all of us, he argues and requires much more public debate: ìThe current system for debating these standards issues is a closed shop of Californian ëtechiesí that needs to be made more transparent and accountable to a global public.î

According to Christian Ahlert, one of the conference Chairs, this issue of who makes the rules and how is really key, ìAs almost every form of human interaction from banking to sharing music is going digital we need to have a clearer understanding of who is making the rules for the interconnected world.î

Peter Davies, a co-Chair from the Oxford Internet Institute, is more circumspect about the possibility of solving these issues easily: ìTechnology and the functionality of the Internet are developing faster than our ability to legislate for them. In so many areas there are no clear answers. Our conference speakers are pre-eminently qualified to consider these issues and to explore them constructively.

The conference takes place against a backdrop of increasing political interest in this area. The general secretary of the ITU who is organizing this yearís World Summit on the Information Society recently called for a global Cyberspace treaty and there have been continuing calls for the reform of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).