In November this year, I was fortunate enough to participate in APIGA Australia 2024. This year was the first time that the program ran and it was an amazing opportunity for anyone interested in the world of internet governance to learn about all of its aspects, ranging from the billions of acronyms to international negotiations. Overall, it was a jam-packed program and I thoroughly enjoyed the event!
Hang On, Internet Governance?
As the name suggests, internet governance is concerned with the regulation of the internet. However, the main stickler here is what is the internet? There is generally a bit of confusion about what the internet is and what is on the internet. To get the elephant in the room, Google isn’t the internet. Google is merely on the internet and the same goes for any website, social media platform, search engine and so on and so forth. At its heart, the internet is a network of networks, which means it connects a bunch of devices together. So, things like undersea cables, internet protocols and data centres are a part of the internet while the rest merely make use of the internet.
But does that mean that things on the internet cannot be regulated? This is quite an important question that is surprisingly complex. The short of it is that ‘internet governance’ is a responsibility shared by a number of groups, including international bodies, private companies and national governments. Moreover, there are roughly three parts of internet governance: the infrastructure layer, the logical layer (think internet protocols) and the content layer. The former two cover what the internet is while the latter is what is on the internet. Generally speaking, content regulation has been something that governments, and to some extent some private companies, control while the other two are managed on an international level, since everyone needs to be on the same page to ‘access the internet’.
Put it this way: The internet is like the international shipping system and the stuff on the internet is what’s being shipped around (so clothes, devices and food or what have you). International shipping law isn’t usually concerned with what is being shipped, more so how it is being shipped (e.g. Are you in your shipping lane or are you trespassing in territorial waters). It is up to national customs/trade departments to decide what they will and won’t allow onto the ships. In a similar way, international internet governance usually only cares about how the internet works (e.g. Who repairs this undersea cable) but not what’s on the internet (e.g. Should we allow pirated material to be hosted on the internet).
Right, Back to APIGA
The Overview
APIGA Australia (short for Asia-Pacific Internet Governance Academy Australia) is essentially a crash-course on internet governance, with a focus on something called ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, yes there are lots of acronyms). The program is based on the Asia Pacific program, which is run by KISA (Korean Internet Security Agency) in Korea. Unlike the regional variant however, APIGA Australia specifically targets 18-35 year olds in Australia who are interested in learning more about internet governance.
The event was held at the Rydges in Melbourne over the course of two days. The program essentially was a number of talks led by experts, interspersed with meals and activities. The topics of the talks were varied and covered everything from the basics of what the internet was to the role of various internet governance agencies, such as ICANN and APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre). The days were jam-packed, with sessions back-to-back throughout the whole day. One of the important discussions that was raised throughout the program was the benefits of a multistakeholder model as opposed to a multilateral system. In the context of internet governance, and international diplomacy generally, a multilateral system is one where the representative parties are all government representatives. The UN is an obvious example of this. On the other hand, a multistakeholder system has representative parties from different areas, such as academia, ordinary civilians, those with relevant technical experience, governments and more.
There is a debate in the internet governance sphere at the moment about which model is better for internet government. Some parties, notably those who would either seek greater regulatory powers at a government level or who would prefer an international body like UN to handle regulations, believe that a multilateral system is preferable. Others prefer a multistakeholder model, because the internet is used by everyone, not just governments, and thus everyone should be represented.
In either case, the talks weren’t given for no reason. Instead, they were providing us with critical information and perspective that we would need for the main component of the program: A model ICANN conference.
Some of the talks had interactive components. In Adam’s talk (pictured), we had to classify what the internet is and what it isn’t
Model ICANN Conference
For those who are familiar with the idea of model UN sittings and such, this is no different except rather than a multilateral forum, ICANN uses a multistakeholder system. All participants were split into three groups: GAC,1 ccNSO,2 and GNSO.3 From there, participants were subdivided into smaller groups to represent individual governments/organisations and a chair/vice-chair was elected for each of the three groups. For example, I was placed in a partnership with another participant to represent the European Commission and was thus a member of the GAC.
The focus of this model conference was DNS abuse and there were two associated problem statements:
- What is your stakeholder group’s agreed definition of DNS abuse?4
- What is your stakeholder group’s expectation of ICANN’s role in DNS abuse?
Given these statements, as individual representatives of our government/organisation, we had to work with the other members of our wider group (GAC, ccNSO or GNSO) to create a group stance that tried to preserve as many of our individual interests as possible. So for example, the delegation for Japan was most convinced that DNS abuse should include intellectual property theft while the delegation for China insisted that the preservation of national sovereignty should be a part of it. Regardless, there was a great discussion about what it should and shouldn’t include and once we, as the GAC, had decided what we want it to be, we now had to convince the other two groups that we were right in a combination of open-floor discussion and smaller group negotiations. It naturally involved a great deal of disagreements, concessions and angry placard flipping until we reached a consensus amongst all three groups. A similar process was repeated for the second problem.5
The model conference room, with all the delegates grouped by their individual organisation and then their wider group (GAC, ccNSO, GNSO)
Overall, it was an excellent opportunity to put into practice all of the knowledge I had gained from the previous talks and to also learn skills in diplomacy, negotiation and public speaking. The only downside was the lack of time. We only had a few hours to plan our group stance and prepare our opening statements and there was only one afternoon for the conference itself. Nevertheless, it was still a fun and engaging session, and it was my favourite part of the APIGA program.
Conclusion and Thank You
Although the program could still use some work (it is, after all, the first time it has run), I still enjoyed the entire event and would strongly recommend it to anyone who is interested in internet governance, or who wants to explore a unique subdomain of cybersecurity. Internet governance itself is a fascinating blend of law and policy, hardware, software, international relations and history. It will probably only become more important as geopolitical tensions rise and more and more people become connected through the internet. Thus, it is critical to have the next generation ready to deal with the latest problems faced by the global internet community. APIGA Australia is the perfect way to get your foot in the door and start making change in this space.
However, APIGA Australia 2024 would not have been the fantastic program it was without the support of so many who deserve a great deal of recognition and credit for their work. A huge thank you to all the auDA staff who spent so long planning and running the event. Particular thanks goes out to Michael, who coordinated the whole event, and Jordan, who also acted as a mentor throughout the program (even sacrificing his voice in the process!). Thanks must also be given to all the mentors who graciously gave up their time to share their insights and experience and yes I will name and shame you all: Ian, Manju, Joyce, Yien Chyn, Charlotte and Sabina. All of you were very friendly and happy to help (even if we completely bungled everything…) and I know that I have learnt a great deal from each of you. Finally, a thank you to all the guest speakers— Rosemary, Adam, Briony and Martin— who came in (physically or virtually) to share your own experience and knowledge. Thank you to all of you!
-
Yes one does eventually grow tired of the endless acronyms. GAC is short for ‘Government Advisory Committee’ and this is composed of, you guessed it, government representatives. Now, like in many other fora, what is a ‘government’ is not precisely clear because the EU manages to get its own spot as the European Commission but the constituent countries, like France, also get their own representatives. Do not get me started on the rest of them. ↩︎
-
ccNSO stands for ‘Country Code Names Supporting Organisation’. Without getting into the nitty gritty of what a country code or a ’name’ in this context is, simply remember that these are the organisations that manage domains that are tied to a country (ccTLD- country code top-level domain). For example anything with .au is managed by auDA and auDA is a member of the ccNSO. Similarly anything with .fr is managed by AFNIC in France. ↩︎
-
GNSO stands for ‘Generic Names Supporting Organisation’. Basically, all the other domains (gTLD- generic top-level domain) will be managed by some private company who will be part of the GNSO. Think of things like .org or .com which don’t have a country attached. ↩︎
-
Ignoring the fact that the problem was to define what it is, DNS abuse is effectively using the DNS (Domain Name System) ‘for bad things’. The scope of ‘bad things’ was the real issue. ↩︎
-
Except as the GAC we took almost the complete opposite stance to what the real-life GAC took, merely because everyone was too tired to negotiate any further after the first problem question. Diplomacy is an endurance sport. ↩︎