Cyberspace in our everyday life

Cyberspace

Rome [ENA] The global and multi-dimensional nature of Cyberspace and its importance presents new frontiers with unmatched prospects and challenges for access to information and knowledge, freedom of expression, privacy and ethics. Cyberspace includes technological, social, cultural, economic, and legal facets. Different national laws, manifold selfregulatory guidelines and a number of

multilateral treaties compose its current regulatory framework. In this fluid scenario, the evolution of applicable overall principles can play a valuable role. UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has been involved in the development of Internet Governance principles mainly through its «Internet Universality» concept, including four key pillars, namely Rights, Openness, Accessibility, and Multistakeholder Participation (called R.O.A.M.).

UNESCO has pointed out in recent years the following topic (i) access to information and knowledge, (ii) freedom of expression, (iii) privacy, and (iv) ethical dimensions of the information society. Therefore, Internet Governance decisions include both scientific reasoning and social considerations of power and authority, comprising policies about how the technical architectures are used to regulate and control content. This architecture involves the principle of “Openness” in the “Internet Universality” concept, and is particularly relevant to issues such as open standards, open access/architecture, open knowledge resources, and open innovation, as well as issues around entry barriers

(whether state imposed or privately enforced). Internet infrastructure can be considered as proxy for content control: Internet policies such as deeppacket inspection are being used for content mediation functions for which they were not originally designed. Such applications of political and economic power raise questions of democratic mandate and oversight. Moreover, the same technologies that improve citizen information diffusion are applied by many actors to filter and censor information and to produce systems of surveillance.

These approaches impact on the exercise of human rights (such as the freedom of expression and privacy) as well as the net neutrality principle as part of “Openness”, which are substantive pillars of “Universality Concept”. Important Internet Governance mechanisms such as the domain name system are mainly governed and shaped by privatesector and technical actors. The assumption of functions for the public good by these actors has in the past contributed to the success of new technological networks. At the same time, there are debates about the appropriate role of other actors (eg. states, interstate organisations, civil society, academia, etc).

“Universality Concept” refers to multistakeholder participation, which requires a wide spread of participatory decision-making while allowing that different formulae may be appropriate for different issues. Internet control points can be considered as sites of global conflict over competing values. Control points on the Internet include Critical Internet Resources (like Internet addresses), protocols and interconnection regimes. Besides how these issues implicate human rights, there is also the question as to users’ ability to participate in issues of values and ethics on the Internet.

This depends on Internet access as a social dimension. These elements are foreseen in the third pillar of the “Internet Universality” concept, which highlights universal access, multilingualism, quality of content, user empowerment and ethical considerations. There’s the dispute between regional geopolitics versus collective action problems of Internet globalization. Despite the internationalization of many activities, it cannot be ignored that global Internet stability is also dependent on local Internet conditions since local oversight and local infrastructure bottlenecks can serve as “obligatory passage points” for international traffic.

The Internet is an enabling space and resource for the realization of all human rights including the right of all people to use the Internet as part of their right to dignity and for participating in social and cultural life. During the sec¬ond wave" of the COVID-19 pan¬demic with all its effects hit¬ting Europe, Internet has been a game changer in many social, political and economic fields.