Conclusion: SDO Decision-making and the Public Interest

The conclusion situates the book’s findings in academic debates on democracy and the Internet, global self-regulation, and civil society, and international decision-making processes in unstructured environments. It assesses whether current standards-developing organization (SDO) decision-making is able to bridge historical representation gaps and deficiencies. A nuanced pattern is emerging with increasing inclusion of a wider number of actors within SDO fora. The first part of the chapter returns to the Multiple Streams (MS) framework applied to the case studies on a comparative basis. It identifies key processes under which SDO rules of interaction are established at the international level and explains which interests have come to the fore within decision-making highlighting the occurrence of policy entrepreneurship, forum shopping, and coupling. The final part explores additional frameworks for SDO regulation where spaces for public interest consideration might occur in the future. These are opportunities for inserting public interest considerations into international and national Acts, certification programmes, and the move towards open source solutions for Internet management. The book concludes that, although the literature is expansive on the interaction of corporate sector actors within SDOs, the study of other actors, such as digital rights groups, civil society, academics, policy entrepreneurs and the technical community as a whole, has been underdressed in the literature on international self-regulatory fora to date. In this respect, the book raises important questions of representation of the public interest at the international level by having addressed the actions of actors within SDO fora who promote public interest goals.

Technical Standards, Dynamic Spectrum Access, and Competing Spectrum Policy Interests in the TV White Space Environment

Digitization of the airwaves and the consequent ‘digital dividend’ led to the vacating of key parts of the spectrum, the main recipients of which were mobile broadband service providers. However, this has trained the focus of still unsatisfied demands of certain providers to a lesser-known part of the spectrum called TV white spaces. White spaces are spectrum buffer zones constructed to prevent interference between broadcasters. Historically, these spaces were occupied by providers of Programme Making and Special Events (PMSE) services, like wireless microphones and wireless in-ear monitor (IEM) systems, which were used mainly in large venues and productions (e.g. concerts halls, churches, schools, theatres, sports and political events). However, as white spaces were considered under-occupied, it led to pressure for them to be opened up to a wider range of users and lower power Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Initiatives to reform TVWS use, led by the United States and the United Kingdom, are underpinned by vital technical standards with the aim of introducing computer-mediated Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) to implement use of the wireless environment. The chapter highlights the contingent nature of technical standards-making in processes of TVWS development in that it shows how opportunities presented by technical standards are constrained by conflict when powerful incumbent interests from commercial, public service, and civil society quarters present opposition to such change.

802.11ax

The local wireless environment has been the setting for the co-existence of licensed mobile communications operators and unlicensed WiFi Internet access providers. The IEEE802.11 family of standards, developed for WiFi services in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), has dominated standards-setting. However, the burgeoning demand for mobile access to the Internet has led to competition for space on the spectrum. Left unaddressed, this co-existence has created practical issues of potential territorial incursion, technical interference, and, ultimately, device underperformance and service degradation. The chapter focuses on the IEEE’s efforts to create a co-existence standard in a crowded and highly contested standards-making space. It shows how alternative standards-making organizational contexts, based on licensed spectrum standards traditions, were able to develop and insert co-existence standards for WiFi ahead of the IEEE initiative. The chapter explains how the IEEE developed its 802.11ax co-existence standard in this environment.

Political Drift and Forum Shifts

This chapter explains one of the most important components of the web: the development and standardization of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and DOM (Document Object Model) which are used for creating web pages and applications. In 1994, Tim Berners-Lee established the World Wide Web consortium (W3C) to work on HTML development. In 1995, the W3C decided to introduce a new standard, WHTML 2.0. However, it was incompatible with the older HTML/WHTML versions. This led to the establishment of Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) which worked externally to the W3C. WHATWG developed HTML5 which was adopted by the major browser developers Google, Opera, Mozilla, IBM, Microsoft, and Apple. For this reason, the W3C decided to work on HTML5, leading to a joint WHATWG/W3C working group. This chapter explains the development of HTML and WHATWG’s Living Standard with explanation of ongoing splits and agreements between the two fora. It explains how this division of labour led to W3C focus on the main areas of web architecture, the semantic web, the web of devices, payments applications, and web and television (TV) standards. This has led to the spillover of work to the W3C from the national sphere, notably in the development of copyright protection for TV streaming.

The Quick UDP Internet Connection (QUIC) and Transport Layer Security 1.3 Standards

Chapter 4 examines the effect of Snowden on security protocols. For twenty years, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and its successor Transport Layer Security (TLS) provided security for Internet traffic. However, the TLS 1.2 protocol developed in 2008 suffered from a series of implementation and security issues. The 2013 Snowden revelations sent shock waves through the engineering community. The extent of the targeting of protocol vulnerabilities by security agencies had been greatly underestimated by the IETF. By 2016, Cisco, Fortinet, and Juniper revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) had successfully targeted its firewalls for years. However, stasis within the IETF barred upgrade to TLS 1.3. The chapter analyses the emergence and contestation of potential solutions to TLS and how the parallel development of the QUIC protocol by Google opened a window of opportunity to enhance security. The agreement on TLS 1.3 in March 2018 was supported by digital rights groups.

The Internet of Things

Apple iPhones do not use the standardized micro-Universal Serial Bus (USB) port but specialized ports for their proprietary Lightning connectors. However, in October 2018, Apple’s vice-president of hardware engineering John Ternus announced the switch to USB-C for the new generation of iPads from 2019. Apple iPhone is expected to follow suit. This marks the end to a long battle over port standardization for personal computers within the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The change came about due to a push from the European Commission for industry to agree on a universally proprietary free standard. This chapter documents how states have been increasingly involved in steering intellectual property rights (IPR) policies within standards-developing organization (SDO) fora. Civil society too has had a role to play from the stance of open source solutions to interoperability, albeit with less and varying degrees of success across the fora. The chapter focuses on how state pressure has counterbalanced historic corporate pressure for preserving patent protection.

Protocols and State Surveillance

This chapter discusses how SDOs have mitigated the targeting of protocol vulnerabilities by security agencies. It begins with protocols identified by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). In this context, the chapter explains legal measures underpinning state surveillance such as the 2018 renewal of Section 702 of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The latter part of the chapter looks at the action of states with development of government positions in the United Kingdom and United States, most notably against the company Huawei. It examines the position of the engineering community and technology companies in relation to these conditions.

Informal Governance and Decision-making Through Multiple Streams

Chapter 2 develops the analytical framework for the book. It sets out the twin theoretical premises of the book, the first relating to global governance at the level of actor influence and the second applying the multiple streams (MS) framework to the level of decision-making within standards-developing organizations (SDOs). It provides critical discussion of the literature on the influence of different actors in international self-regulatory fora and explains how certain actors can uphold the public interest in fora where states and public actors are largely absent. The multiple streams approach provides an in-depth account of how problems appear on SDO agendas, the nature of the contestation relating to the discussion of standards development, and the extent to which and how standards are translated to final adoption. The chapter identifies mechanisms at the conceptual level which facilitate our understanding of how deliberation of standards development lead to agreement and policy decisions.

The Do Not Track Standard

The proliferation and persistence of online tracking of consumer behaviour through different technologies for the purpose of collecting information and constructing targeted advertisements based on the profiling of the interests and preferences of users, at surface level, seems relatively harmless. From a marketing perspective, such activity is crucial for both profit and online content. However, the broader impact and implications of such activity is much more wide-ranging, in particular given that much of it lacks transparency and can result in the violation of a plethora of individual rights. This chapter assesses development of the Do Not Track standard (DNT) in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as a response to tracking behaviour that has sought to ensure that users have a choice on whether or not they are tracked online. It explains how different interests and stakeholders converged on its conception and diverged in its development with focus on the role of privacy advocates.

Global Standard-setting in Internet Governance

This introductory chapter charts the debate on and importance of global standard-setting for the Internet and for Internet governance more broadly. Despite being highly contested, the importance of standards-developing organizations (SDOs) for ensuring and maintaining the openness, interconnectivity, and security of the Internet are critical. Their utility is outlined before setting out the central guiding questions, and aims and objectives of the book, theoretically and empirically. The added value of the approach taken in relation to SDO decision-making is explicated. The chapter then details developments within SDOs to address the public interest. It concludes with the structure, argument, and logic of the remaining chapters, with explanation of the choice of case studies, namely privacy/security, mobile communications standards, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), and copyright. Each chapter in the book assesses the public interest in SDO decision-making and the mechanisms that have affected the direction of standards’ development.