LIFTING THE LID ON THE INTERNET STANDARD SETTING… AND ABOUT TIME, TOO!

An appreciation by Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers and Phillip Taylor MBE, Head of Chambers, Reviews Editor, “The Barrister”, and Mediator


This new and exciting work from Oxford University Press (OUP) on “Global Standard Setting in Internet Governance” has been edited by Alison Harcourt, George Christou, and Seamus Simpson. It emerged after the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded the editors’ project known as the International Professional Fora: A Study of Civil Society Organisation Participation in Internet Governance (2015-2018).

In this work, the editors address what they describe as a “representation of the public interest in Internet standard developing organisations (SDOs)”. They comment that much of the existing literature on Internet governance has previously focused on international organisations which include the United Nations (UN), the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)”. Needless to say, there is a substantial “List of Abbreviations” at the beginning of the book to assist readers with the complexities of the subject!

The book develops its theme to explain how the literature covering standard developing organisations has to date focused on organisational aspects. This is a new title from OUP which we consider “breaks new ground” with investigation of standard development within SDOs. The editors have centred on case studies covering standards in relation to areas such as privacy and security, mobile communications, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and copyright matters.

We have here a statement which “lifts the lid on internet standard setting” giving us a detailed insight into a world which, although highly technical, very much affects the way we, as citizens, live and work on a daily basis. We agree with the authors who say that, in producing this insight, it adds significantly to the trajectory of research on Internet standards and SDOs that explore the relationship between politics and protocols.

The analysis offered here contributes to academic debates on democracy and the internet, global self-regulation and civil society, and international decision-making processes in unstructured environments. The book advances work on the Multiple Streams Framework (MS) by applying it to decision-making in non-state environments, namely SDOs which have long been dominated by private actors.

The book is aimed at academic audiences in political science, computer science communications and science and technology studies as well as representatives from civil society, the civil and public services, government, engineers, and experts working within SDO fora. It will also be accessible to researchers and students at the postgraduate and undergraduate levels.

The publication date of this hardback edition was 30th January 2020.