Laying the foundation for a commercialized internet: international internet governance in the 1990s

Abstract

In the current era, the commercial nature of the internet seems like a foregone conclusion. However, during the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton, the structures and guidelines for how this global system would operate were unresolved. Clinton took direct steps to ensure the commercialization of the internet and made a deliberate effort to gain agreement with public and private interest groups both in the United States and abroad. This article examines those efforts, focusing on three key questions present in the global discourse: First, where does oversight for internet structures come from, both in terms of country of origin, but also in terms of public versus private sectors? Second, how do traditional economic concerns translate to this new system? And finally, what protections are prioritized in this system? In looking at the patterns in that discourse, I argue that the Clinton Administration's leadership in the area of internet governance projected a concern for an open, global internet while in actuality, the Administration pursued a U.S.-centric approach to governance that prioritized commercial interests. Given the continued importance of national sovereignty in debates around internet governance, the decisions being made in the 1990s demand further consideration.

Exploring age-related patterns in internet access: Insights from a secondary analysis of New Zealand survey data

“…Since the commercialisation of the Internet in the 1990s (Grosse, 2020), access to the online medium has become a topic of research, policy intervention, and public discussion -with some voices arguing that it is a human right (Reglitz, 2020;. Data from the World Bank estimates that the percentage of Internet users worldwide has progressively grown from 16 percent in 2005 to 66 percent in 2022 (World Bank, 2022).…”

Centrality and power. The struggle over the techno‐political configuration of the Internet and the global digital order

“…66The complex history of the commercialisation and privatisation of the Internet has received comparatively little scholarly attention, with a few detailed exceptions (e.g., Greenstein, 2015; Grosse, 2020; McChesney, 2013; Tréguer, 2019). …”

“…The latter form is of particular importance since it is exercised by the actors who can determine the logic of the network (programmers) or change the logic of the network (switchers); these actors can themselves represent networks(Castells, 2016, p. 12). Our ideas of how power is exercised in networks is inspired by all four forms and takes up the idea of reconfiguring network logics.6 The complex history of the commercialisation and privatisation of the Internet has received comparatively little scholarly attention, with a few detailed exceptions (e.g.,Greenstein, 2015;Grosse, 2020;McChesney, 2013;Tréguer, 2019).7 An unfiltered insight into the Chinese government's strategic thinking is provided by the "International Strategy of Cooperation on Cyberspace" published by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2017.…”

Negotiating digital public spaces: context, purpose and audiences

“…The public library designation alerts us to the distortions of the digital public, but it is not ultimately a frame of reference that can do substantial work in helping us understand what the DPLA can accomplish or who its audiences are. The multistakeholder system of the commercialized Internet (Grosse, 2020) leaves public institutions at the mercy of private funding, while philanthropy is often connected to private sector and marketplace deliverables. This is typified in calls to replace libraries with an Amazon/Starbucks hybrid to save the taxpayer money.…”