INVITED SPEAKER

Why can’t we regulate the internet?

Dr. Des Freedman
University of London, United Kingdom

Abstract

According to David Cameron, President Sarkozy is ‘totally wrong’ to try and regulate the internet and calls instead for the promotion of more competition in order to stimulate jobs and innovation. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg warns against excessive regulation and claims that interfering in technology will only undermine the freedom project with which social media are associated. But given pressing issues concerning privacy, intellectual property, access to content and increased gatekeeping power, why shouldn’t we attempt to treat the internet as a public communications system that is subject to public oversight in order to promote democracy?
This paper examines current directions in internet regulation and argues that many western states have adopted a highly ambiguous attitude towards internet regulation: they are keen to delegate responsibility for everyday governance to a range of subcontracted organizations that operate on self-regulatory lines yet anxious to make sure that they maintain a strategic oversight of networks that have increasing military and economic significance. This ambiguity reflects the changing scope of the state in neoliberal times or perhaps it reflects the changing nature of regulation itself as internet architectures allow private companies to take over regulatory functions previously assumed by public bodies. The paper focuses on key mobilizing ideas that have helped to shape internet regulation including the turn towards ‘governance’ and code-based regulation as well as the continuities between ‘networked’ and more established forms of communication regulation. Finally, it reflects on some of the ways in which the internet is implicated in a fundamental neoliberal transformation of the power relations inside the regulatory process and poses two questions that are central to contemporary democracies: should we regulate the internet and, if so, who should the regulators be?

Biography of the Invited Speaker

Des Freedman is Reader in Communications and Cultural Studies in the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London and a member of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre. He is co-author of a forthcoming book with James Curran and Natalie Fenton, Misunderstanding the Internet (Routledge 2012) and was a UK representative on the EU Cost project that examined ‘the impact of the internet on the mass media in Europe’. He is the author of The Politics of Media Policy (Polity 2008) and a member of the National Council of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom.