Protecting the Internet with international law
Section snippets
International law and the global network – facing the challenge
The Internet is an environment where international law, with all its perplexities, needs to be coherently and effectively applied. Yet current international law approach to Internet governance shows a pertaining reluctance of scholars and practitioners to embrace the challenges posed by global governance of the biggest international open electronic network. The few Internet-related works strongly rooted in international law, most predominantly the Tallinn Manual and the Tallinn Manual 2.0, have
Elements of Internet governance
Internet governance, once a purely technical exercise that later evolved to cover nearly all Internet-related activities, is now being perceived as one of many tools to enforce national policies and local laws. States reach out to operators providing core Internet services, expecting them to assist with issues of national security, crime prevention or anti-terrorist measures. This increasing trend shows a misconception of the way the network operates, putting at risk its fundamental end-to-end
Critical Internet infrastructure and “public core” of the Internet
The concept behind Internet's public core is a functional one – it aims to ensure an open and reliable Internet, free from third party influence, regardless of reasons or interests behind it. As Broeders argues, for the Internet to be considered a global public good one must “establish and disseminate an international standard stipulating that the Internet's public core”. Although ambiguous, the notion is used to describe the network's main protocols and infrastructure, “which are a global
Managing critical infrastructures and avoiding threats
The Tallinn Manual defines critical infrastructure (CI) as all systems and assets, physical and virtual, within a nation-state's jurisdiction that “are so vital that their incapacitation or destruction may debilitate a State's security, economy, public health or safety or the environment.”45 It also defines “cyber infrastructure” covering “communications, storage, and computing resources upon which computer systems
Lessons learnt from international law
International cooperation on critical infrastructure protection is not the only analogy to be drawn from existing legal frameworks. Also, for example, the concept of shared spaces, to be used by all states in a uniform, non-harmful way is not new to the international community, international relations and international law. Areas of international law that can be used for reference with regard to protecting the core of the Internet include: 1) the law of the sea; 2) air law; 3) space law; 4)
Governing the core vs the multistakeholder challenge
The academic discourse on various governance models has put Internet governance into a broader context of Global Administrative Law, drawing analogies to contracts, laws, regulations and principles within sports law, trade law or human rights law, reflecting the complex, comprehensive institutional settings.68
Recommendations and foresight – governing shared Internet resources
There seems to be little debate on the need to protect the stability and security of the “Internet's public core” seen as its protocols and standards. The short list of Internet's core resources includes 1) Internet backbone networks, 2) DNS servers, 3) IXPs and 4) TLD related services (registries and registrars). Legal tools to govern Internet's public core can be derived from general international law, in particular the principles of due diligence and state responsibility. With reference to
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.