Global Digital Data Governance | Polycentric Perspectives | Carolina A
www.taylorfrancis.com
This book provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary digital data governance, highlighting the importance of cooperation across sectors and disciplines in

(Reproducing this from Fission Talk)

Below I will add in my condensed chapter notes. Each chapter is available as its own paper on the book website 1 if you want to just pick and choose. Many of these chapters were presented as papers at the Internet Governance Forum in 2022.

Here is the TOC for your reference:

  • Chad KohalykOPMEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    Ch11: Global Data Governance by Internet Interconnection

    • I enjoyed this chapter about how “the Internet’s network architecture is data governance”
    • Digital data travel through multiple protocols and pass through different networks (also referred to as Autonomous Systems, or ASes) as well as various physical media
      • 70,000 ASes
    • the Internet’s polycentric interconnection architecture both affects and is affected by data production and flows.
    • peering and transit relationships
    • IXPs and CDNs becoming a central power
    • Another key aspect of interconnection has to do with sharing routing tables. … It is in this context that the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) has an important role.
    • The open and public Internet as an open platform in which resources are publicly shared and permissionless innovation is fostered has gradually been supplanted by proprietary (or closed) and private networks dominated by large private cloud ecosystems, operated by a few big tech companies and an array of providers offering non-public connectivity services
    • the more private Internet, in which the data distribution occurs within closed or internal networks with the massive use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).
    • some fascinating case studies:
      • how local ISPs can lose out (in terms of having local decision-making power) to large IXPs and CDNs. One solution is NIC.br’s OpenCDN initiative.
      • Routing security: BGP susceptible to errors. Solutions include Internet Routing Registries (IRRs), BGPSEC, the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), and the Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS)
      • in both the above cases you can see how the architecture itself is a form of governance
    • data governance by Internet interconnection takes place in polycentric ways. From the choice to connect and how this interconnection takes place (peering, transit, IXP), through to the use of CDNs and arriving at issues such as the quality and reliability of the information shared by the networks in this interconnection, there are multiple actors and centres of decision-making.
    • =={the chapter breaks down the various characteristics of Polycentrism. Including:}==
      • Norms: economic growth. But when looking at IXPs, routing, CDNs, there is a need for the growth of non-market collaboration
      • Practices: NOGs (Internet Operators Groups) professional communities; multistakeholderism; use of open source tools; the idea that the more connections the better
      • Underlying Orders: embedded view that Internet governance should be something done by private entities; problem-solving through technology
    • Future research on global data governance must consider the continually changing nature of Internet interconnection.
    • the Internet has increasingly become a closed network dominate systems, with particular emphasis on the growing role of CDNs