Internet Co Regulation

Chris Marsden argues that co-regulation is the defining feature of the Internet in Europe. Co-regulation offers the state a route back into questions of legitimacy, governance and human rights, thereby opening up more interesting conversations than a static no-regulation versus state regulation binary choice. The basis for the argument is empirical investigation, based on a multi-year, European Commission-funded study and is further reinforced by the direction of travel in European and English law and policy, including the Digital Economy Act 2010. He places Internet regulation within the regulatory mainstream, as an advanced technocratic form of self- and co-regulation which requires governance reform to address a growing constitutional legitimacy gap. The literature review, case studies and analysis shed a welcome light on policymaking at the centre of Internet regulation in Brussels, London and Washington, revealing the extent to which states, firms and, increasingly, citizens are developing a new type of regulatory bargain.

Chris Marsden argues that co-regulation is the defining feature of the Internet in Europe. Co-regulation offers the state a route back into questions of legitimacy, governance and human rights, thereby opening up more interesting conversations than a static no-regulation versus state regulation binary choice. The basis for the argument is empirical investigation, based on a multi-year, European Commission-funded study and is further reinforced by the direction of travel in European and English law and policy, including the Digital Economy Act 2010. He places Internet regulation within the regulatory mainstream, as an advanced technocratic form of self- and co-regulation which requires governance reform to address a growing constitutional legitimacy gap. The literature review, case studies and analysis shed a welcome light on policymaking at the centre of Internet regulation in Brussels, London and Washington, revealing the extent to which states, firms and, increasingly, citizens are developing a new type of regulatory bargain.

The ever increasing use of computers, networks and the Internet has led to the need for regulation in the fields of cybercrime, cybersecurity and national security. This SpringerBrief provides insights into the development of self- and co-regulatory approaches to cybercrime and cybersecurity in the multi-stakeholder environment. It highlights the differences concerning the ecosystem of stakeholders involved in each area and covers government supported initiatives to motivate industry to adopt self-regulation. Including a review of the drawbacks of existing forms of public-private collaboration, which can be attributed to a specific area (cybercrime, cybersecurity and national security), it provides some suggestions with regard to the way forward in self- and co-regulation in securing cyberspace.

The case for a smarter “prosumer law” approach to Internet regulation that would better protect online innovation, public safety, and fundamental democratic rights. Internet use has become ubiquitous in the past two decades, but governments, legislators, and their regulatory agencies have struggled to keep up with the rapidly changing Internet technologies and uses. In this groundbreaking collaboration, regulatory lawyer Christopher Marsden and computer scientist Ian Brown analyze the regulatory shaping of “code”—the technological environment of the Internet—to achieve more economically efficient and socially just regulation. They examine five “hard cases” that illustrate the regulatory crisis: privacy and data protection; copyright and creativity incentives; censorship; social networks and user-generated content; and net neutrality. The authors describe the increasing “multistakeholderization” of Internet governance, in which user groups argue for representation in the closed business-government dialogue, seeking to bring in both rights-based and technologically expert perspectives. Brown and Marsden draw out lessons for better future regulation from the regulatory and interoperability failures illustrated by the five cases. They conclude that governments, users, and better functioning markets need a smarter “prosumer law” approach. Prosumer law would be designed to enhance the competitive production of public goods, including innovation, public safety, and fundamental democratic rights.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Chris Marsden maneuvers through the hype articulated by Netwrok Neutrality advocates and opponents. He offers a clear-headed analysis of the high stakes in this debate about the Internet's future, and fearlessly refutes the misinformation and misconceptions that about' Professor Rob Freiden, Penn State University Net Neutrality is a very heated and contested policy principle regarding access for content providers to the Internet end-user, and potential discrimination in that access where the end-user's ISP (or another ISP) blocks that access in part or whole. The suggestion has been that the problem can be resolved by either introducing greater competition, or closely policing conditions for vertically integrated service, such as VOIP. However, that is not the whole story, and ISPs as a whole have incentives to discriminate between content for matters such as network management of spam, to secure and maintain customer experience at current levels, and for economic benefit from new Quality of Service standards. This includes offering a 'priority lane' on the network for premium content types such as video and voice service. The author considers market developments and policy responses in Europe and the United States, draws conclusions and proposes regulatory recommendations.

An interdisciplinary survey of the issues surrounding the governance of the Internet.

An examination of how self-regulation works (or doesn't work) in practice, in a variety of countries, as well as the problems of balancing private censorship against fundamental rights to freedom of expression and privacy for media users.

Complexity theory as a subject has gained increasing prominence across numerous disciplines including physics, biology, sociology and economics. Large interconnected systems such as the Internet display a number of inherent architectural characteristics deeming them well-suited to the study of complex dynamic networks. This important book uses various network science-based tools to explore the contentious issue of Internet regulation. The author demonstrates that the Internet as a global communications space is a self-organizing entity that has proven problematic for regulators, and that in order to regulate cyberspace, one must first understand how the network operates. In order to illustrate how the world wide web operates, Andres Guadamuz presents case studies in copyright policy, peer-production and cyber crime, providing in-depth analyses of the challenges posed by the Internet's complex dynamic networks. The book concludes that regulatory efforts that ignore empirical evidence will ultimately encounter serious problems. Networks, Complexity and Internet Regulation introduces network theory to legal audiences and applies some of the characteristics of large distributed self-organizing networks to the topic of Internet regulation. As such, this fascinating book will prove invaluable to researchers, academics and students in the fields of Internet regulation and policy, intellectual property law and information technology law. Contents: Introduction 1. The Science of Complex Networks 2. Complexity and the Law 3. Internet Architecture and Regulation 4. Copyright Networks 5. Peer-production Networks 6. Cybercrime and Networks Conclusion Bibliography Index