From governance to regulating the Internet

This piece of research aims at examining the various governance mechanisms that allow for a plurality of stakeholders to shape the Internet evolution. The emergence of the concept of governance and the declinations of the notion of regulation will be analysed, on a preliminary basis, in order to understand how such concepts can be applied to the internet ecosystem.

Subsequently, the Internet history will be explored in order to highlight the normative value of technical standards and protocols, as well as the "design principles", which allow for the functioning of this global network. We will highlight the affirmation of a new organisational paradigm grounded on the participation of heterogeneity of stakeholders to the negotiation of regulatory instruments whose application is independent from national borders. This multistakeholder paradigm is embodied by entities such as the IETF, ICANN and IGF, which are usually unkown by lawyers. On the one hand the scrutiny of these entities will allow us to apprehend their pivotal role with regard to the definition of Internet's logic structure as well as to the implementation of a true "cyber-territorial" administration. On the other hand the analysis of the participatory processes that characterise these entities will allow us to argue for the possibility of reproducing such processes in order to elaborate regulatory blue-prints through a multistakeholder negotiation.

Indeed this piece of research relies on the thesis that the multistakeholder participation that characterises the Internet's "technical" governance can be transposed to the elaboration of regulatory models that may be adopted by national legislators and regulators, or may inspire them, by reason of their efficacy. Such a thesis has been concretely applied through the elaboration of a model framework on network neutrality.