Editor’s Note: For a history lesson, see, Preventing A New World Internet Order.
From: R Street
The Internet Governance Forum is a yearly meeting in which civil society, government, and private sector representatives from around the world convene to talk about internet policy issues. The IGF 2017 meeting last month in Geneva featured a number of interesting discussions and conversations about e-commerce, data localization, and trade law. One common theme I observed was that many people in the internet policy arena are very nervous about the inclusion of internet governance issues in international trade agreements. Their complaints focus largely on the process by which trade agreements are negotiated.
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Trade rules may not be perfect, but they are an incredibly valuable bulwark against internet fragmentation that policy experts should engage with rather than condemn.
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