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The legal framework of the Internet under the UN system
 
Код статьиS278229070029147-7-1
DOI10.18254/S278229070029147-7
Тип публикации Статья
Статус публикации Опубликовано
Авторы
Zhang Yu  
Аффилиация: International Law in the School of Law, Lanzhou University
Адрес: China
De Castro Douglas
Аффилиация: International Law in the School of Law, Lanzhou University
Адрес: China
Название журналаLaw & Digital Technologies
ВыпускТом 3 № 2
Страницы9-17
Аннотация

This paper addresses the ambiguous legal boundaries surrounding the Internet, a persistent concern for legal researchers.  As a new frontier for legal researchers, issues related to the Internet or cyber matters within the legal context have persisted for decades, with some aspects consistently in a state of obscurity and fragmentation.Moreover, there is a phenomenon of overlooking the comprehensive development of a legal narrative, leaving this branch in a state of isolation. To enhance clarity, the paper narrows its focus to three key institutions that regulate the Internet under the UN system,this paper obtains its breakthrough points from the angle of organs, and then of basic concepts embraced by the organs.Upon reviewing the core elements at play in the Internet governance system, the multistakeholder model emerges as a key player in Internet governance within the UN system.Insummary, employing the methodologies of textual, historical, and normative analysis allows us to explore the underlying questions and outline a foundational map of Internet regulation within the UN system.

Ключевые словаInternet Governance, Legal Framework, United Nations (UN) System, Multistakeholder Model, Cyber Law.
Источник финансированияThe authors thank Lanzhou University for the financial support for this research.
Получено04.09.2023
Дата публикации30.12.2023
Кол-во символов34655
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1 The Internet has become an essential global entity in the digital era, significantly influencing our society, economy, and personal lives. Nevertheless, the rapid and widespread expansion of its influence has resulted in numerous legal obstacles, perplexing both researchers and practitioners. As such, this study explores the intricate and frequently unclear legal parameters that delineate the Internet, a realm that continues to be a developing frontier for legal scholars. For many years, the legal community has struggled with a range of concerns related to the Internet and cyber affairs. These difficulties are distinguished by their enduring nature and propensity to be enveloped in ambiguity and disarray. Consequently, although the Internet has had a substantial influence on several elements of contemporary life, there is a discernible deficiency in the thorough establishment of a legal framework tailored to this particular field. This divide has resulted in the legal discussion over Internet regulation being relatively isolated and underdeveloped. To address the complexity of this problem, this article specifically examines institutions within the United Nations (UN) system responsible for the debates and attempts to regulate the Internet. The study seeks to highlight key areas of innovation within these institutions that can enhance comprehension and consistency in understanding the legal framework controlling the Internet, thus, providing legal guidelines to the UN members in developing their own legal frameworks. Therefore, this research strategy contributes to mapping out the fundamental legal principles built with the UN System regarding Internet governance. An in-depth examination of the fundamental components that make up the Internet governance system within the United Nations highlights the prominent significance of the multistakeholder model. This concept has become a fundamental aspect of Internet governance inside the UN framework, promoting the involvement of various stakeholders from diverse sectors in the decision-making process. In order to navigate through the intricate layers, the study utilizes a blend of textual, historical, and normative analysis approaches. The tripartite approach allows for a comprehensive examination of the fundamental issues that shape Internet governance inside the United Nations system. The primary objective is to establish a fundamental framework that may direct future investigation and decision-making in this progressively significant and ever-changing domain. This study seeks to provide insight into the complex network of legal regulations, organizations, and principles that control the Internet, particularly within the framework of the United Nations system. By engaging in this action, it aims to actively participate in the ongoing discussion and assist in the creation of a more logical and efficient legal structure for the digital era.
2 REGULATION OF THE INTERNET WITHOUT CLEAR BORDERS
3 Even if the history of the Internet is that short, undoubtedly the Internet has penetrated substantially into the modern human world. According to the statistics publicized through the website by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), in the past five years, the proportion of the population using the Internet worldwide has increased by 23%, reaching 67% in 2023 (ITU-D 2023)1. The network that connects the whole world is not limited to the imagination of writers of science fiction any longer. Before considering the legal interpretation regarding the Internet, it is necessary to go back to it is underlying idea of the establishment of open architecture networking, making wide resource sharing or, in other words, to connectivity to be realized. However, just as more than 20 years ago scholars at that time would have been astonished by the rapid development of the Internet, as we are today. That is especially true with regard to the emergence of artificial intelligence applications since the 2010s, which justified the investigation of the Internet as an information exchange venue with the real world and the fact that “big data” generated by the Internet makes it possible to let us authorize intelligence more like human to AI (Liu, Shi and Li 2017). The strength of the Internet at present is not limited to the correlated technologies, a chain reaction brought by the technology revolution that is not strange to our civilization either. Numberless careers directly or indirectly involved with it are affected somehow and, of course, benefits or not from it. As such, forms and processes of producing change, accordingly, leading to the structures of society’s layers’ fluctuation. That’s the time in which we turn to the phenomenon “industrial revolution”, seeking inspiration to deal with the ruling of cyber society by analogy (Shalhoub and Al Qasimi 2010). The advancement of new technologies is not a novel phenomenon. In the case of telecommunication technologies starting in the 18th century, the telegraph became an important way to speed up communication, followed by the telephone, the television, and the build-up of the telecommunications network (Stone 2015). As such, the regulation involved with information technologies is not an old one. With this premise, it seems to be more acceptable when we notice that Internet things are literally attractive, offering enriching layers for researching, for which scholars holding diverse backgrounds regarding legal grounds have the standing to propose their concerns and approaches towards them. That makes a shortcoming in this field magnify, the scholars distract their attention away from the fundamental section of this field, leading to the spot that at present, we cannot be sure there’s a new discipline classified as international Internet law or international cyber law. To that extent, actors may find it even hard to determine some fundamental glossaries in this field to organize the ideas and create categories. Just like the word “cyberspace”, an idea that was used first in science fiction literature, creating the imaginary world of alternative dimensions where specific phenomena might happen (Fields 2018). While the debate around the hermeneutical interpretation of the word itself has not stopped, since the combination of the words “cyber” and “space” has been of relatively obvious and the subconscious intent in creating the context of another world compared with the world before, that is, the virtual world. For instance, there is an argument that the term “cyberspace” itself indicates the spatial metaphor, probably causing unconscious impressions and, thus, making the researchers distracted. (Wagner, Kettemann and Vieth 2019) People would probably be impressed firstly with this word that there is a particular virtual geographical place created on the Internet technologies. On the other hand, Supporters using this word get easier access to cyber domain arguments. In addition, voices are arguing there are arguments for the separation of the cyber world from the industrial world due to their independent existence (Barlow 2019). The concepts “digital world” and “virtual world” share the same ontology with “cyberspace,” which are embedded within cross-disciplinary features that pose the same challenges to most legal researchers. When we dig deeper in this field, the problems present better. In the dimension of international law, there are literally too narrow points causing hot and meaningful discussions in this field. Browsing existing pieces regarding the Internet of Things or cyber of Things published by scholars in international law, there are generally several research directions. Directly related to the technological roots of the Internet, the angle of engineers works well in the field, by which discussions from code to the virtual world are enriching as Lessig (2009) points out that as the basic architecture of the cyber world, code could be seen as the law of the cyberspace. De Nardis (2014) chose the perspective closer to engineering to show his ideas regarding features and the reasons for the forming of features for Internet Governance in the global dimension. With this angle, there has been a prediction for the narrative of cyber law or we are telling here about the regulation of the Internet referring to the technologies’ development as in Murray (2017). Furthermore, as the Internet gradually penetrates its function in aspects of social life, its affection in politics especially pointing at democracy, is broadly cared (Wilhelm 2000; Balkin 2004; Kornbluh, Goodman and Weiner 2020). At the military dimension, the development of Tallin Manuel provides evidence of a never-ending enthusiasm of people towards cyber operations, and it deserves to add that Tallin Manuel reflects another essential issue around the applicability of general International law to the cyber field (Schmitt 2013; Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations 2017; I. Liu 2016; Delerue 2020). Of course, the economic section brought by the Internet is the core reason for the charm of the Internet, it’s appropriate to take it as the coronation for the Internet to interrelate it with the brand new industrial revolution (Fields 2018; Johannessen 2019; Mayer, Vanderheiden, and Wong 2021). While human rights in the digital world have been paid attention to, such as privacy rights, freedom of speech, access rights, and so on (Basho 2000; Balkin, 2004; Efroni 2011). Besides, currently, more attention has been paid to AI techniques (for the well-known progress in generative AI) and the development of law, which may be suitable to be seen as branches or kind of extension on advanced digital technology with its roots inseparable from Internet technologies as mentioned above (Čerka, Grigienė, and Sirbikytė 2015; Surden 2019). Looking through the keywords of the literature mentioned, readers would find that a similar situation of disordering concepts’ usage happens all the time. There are more gaps in the research field of this realm, which points to an uncertain glossary. Apart from the concept of “cyber law”, we may find “digital law” and “Internet governance” exist in sparse works of scholars. Even when we turn to the angles of international institutions or domestic dimensions, there are more distinctions in the narrative. In this paper, we argue that the law is not yet that mature, especially since we only look forward to showing its one aspect from the angle of international law. Moreover, there’s confusion if there exists there is confusion about the existence a certain discipline named called international cyber law. To make it better for us and our readers to focus on the main points of this problem, this paper would just take the limited horizon of the UN System. For that, we mainly apply methods of textual analysis, normative analysis, and historical analysis, through which the developments of the Internet of things in legal narrative under the UN system could be found or it is in a more mature state of development. This paper expects to provide explanations and understanding consistent with the historical evolution. On that, we may obtain the perspectives for several questions: How and why would the UN define the Internet of things differently at the beginning of their caring and now? How does the revolution of the concept of Internet things then influence the legal interpretation related? What is the map of Internet ruling under the UN system? Is there a discipline functioning as a branch of law in this realm? The following first section will begin with the leading institutions regulating the Internet within the UN system, through which we provide a brief history of governance of the Internet. Secondly, based on the brief history of institutional development, we propose the diversity of core concepts of the different organs, the content of which affects the functioning of organs relatively. Then, we focus on the standard mode of the existing institutions in the Internet governance field under the UN system, trying to find if it is operating well as an assumption. Finally, with the latest movement acted by the UN, we might provide ideas regarding Internet governance in the future in the context of the continuing digital era. 1. See more: >>>> .

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