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In discussing the historical origins of sovereignty, Jens Bartelson (2018, 510) wrote, "Making sense of sovereignty. . . entails making sense of its component terms—supreme authority and territory—and how these terms were forged together into a concept." The question of sovereignty in cyberspace, however, inverts this historical "forging together," as territoriality and authority are sundered in cyberspace. This paper argues that attempts to apply sovereignty to cyberspace governance are inappropriate to the domain. It develops a technically grounded definition of "cyberspace" and examines its characteristics as a distinct domain for action, conflict, and governance, while clarifying its relationship to territoriality. It reviews the literature on cyberspace and sovereignty since the early 1990s, showing the emergence of explicitly pro-sovereigntist ideas and practices in the last ten years. The cyber-sovereignty debate is linked to IR research on the historical emergence of sovereignty, demonstrating how technologies routinely change the basis of international order and challenging the presumption that territorial sovereignty is a stable and uniform principle of international organization that can be presumptively applied to the internet. The paper also links the conceptual debate over cyber-sovereignty to the real-world geopolitical struggle over the governance of the internet, showing how different conceptions of sovereignty serve the interests of different powers, notably the United States, Russia, and China. The paper explores the relevance of an alternative governance model for cyberspace based on the global commons concept. It refutes the arguments made against that model and then explains what difference it might make to governance if we conceive of cyberspace in that way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article explores the response of Internet governance to deep packet inspection (DPI) and analyzes the policies and regulations forming around it. The use-cases of DPI are categorized into network security, bandwidth management, governmental surveillance, content regulation, copyright enforcement and advertisement injection. The disruptive potential of DPI is attributed to its conflict with end-to-end argument, limitation of public carriers' responsibility for the actions of users, and users' expectations of privacy. A theoretical framework model illustrates the application of technology-aware policy analysis to DPI governance. Case studies show the pursuit by Internet service providers of use-cases on bandwidth management and copyright protection.

New security technologies are never neutral in their impact; it is known that they can alter power relations and economic dependencies among stakeholders. This article examines the attempt to introduce the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) to the Internet to help improve routing security, and identifies incentives various actors have towards RPKI implementation. We argue that RPKI requires ISPs to achieve security at the expense of autonomy, requires all actors to tradeoff simplified global compatability and centralization of power, and affects the policies and business models of the Regional Internet Registries and their relationship to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. While the Internet remains a space where authority is highly distributed, elements of hierarchy do exist, especially around critical resource allocation, and it is likely that security and other concerns will lead to continuing efforts to leverage those hierarchies into more powerful governance arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet's Whois service allows anyone to type a domain name into a Web interface and then receive the name and contact details of whoever has registered it. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) contracts make it mandatory to provide indiscriminate public access to this information. Data protection laws in Europe and other countries conflict with this ICANN policy, yet Whois has remained in place for a decade. This article offers an explanation for this puzzling contradiction. We use the concept of a default value to explain how the development of a technological system can change the institutional conditions under which rights claims can be realized. We also note that the Whois story poses problems for Daniel Drezner's theory of global governance. Despite disagreement between the two great powers, the ICANN regime provides effective global governance; Drezner's theory cannot explain how the rise of a technical system could produce a global shift in privacy policy and alter the bargaining power of Great Powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes the case for using regular and objective procedures to assign new Internet top-level domain names (TLDs) instead of the unscheduled, irregular, discretionary and ad hoc processes and criteria currently used by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The paper shows that ICANNs current approach to TLD additions is anti-competitive and fosters rent-seeking, political strife, and the potential for corruption. The article argues that there is now and likely always will be demand for TLD additions. The article suggests that ICANN's role is not to second-guess the marketplace by choosing which of these TLDs are "good ideas" or most likely to succeed, but simply to coordinate TLD assignments. The article concludes by anticipating arguments that might be advanced against the proposed procedure, and welcoming the initial steps of ICANN, the OECD, and WIPO to address this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a discussion on who should control the Internet. Internet governance refers to the making and enforcement of policies for the worldwide Internet community. These policies not only have technical consequences, but also social and political consequences. Practically, much of Internet governance is related to the physically management of the Internet's system of unique identifiers, such as domain names and IP addresses. In 1998, the U.S. government subcontracted these functions to a private not-for-profit corporation with international participation: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Since its establishment, ICANN has administered the DNS, introduced competition among domain name registrars, and created a dispute resolution process for trademark conflicts. Despite these successes, ICANN has to face many pressures for reform because governments wants more control over the Internet. In September 2005, the UN World Summit on the Information Society, a coalition of countries criticized the United States' unilateral control of the Internet's DNS and proposed the establishment of a multinational Council to supervise it.