Governance advocates see crowd-sourcing as way to fix Internet ills

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Responding to a dizzying array of issues that threaten to break the Internet, from privacy to tax dodging to cybercrime, a group of the world's leading governance organizations say greater user involvement, not top-down control, is needed. Three organizations -- Brazil's Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br), Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) -- are setting up a new group to find solutions to Internet governance issues, instead of waiting for governments to agree.

NETmundial, as the group will be known, will map out best practices for resolving complex problems, ranging from online privacy to Internet taxation, security and child protection. The group plans to turn to the Internet's own models of crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding that power web institutions such as Wikipedia to turn decade-old debates among top international technical organizations into action plans.

US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said, “I welcome the NetMundial initiative announced today, which is based on the principles and roadmap developed in Brazil last April by the global Internet multistakeholder community. I hope it will be successful in advancing multistakeholder Internet governance that is open, transparent and allows for the participation of all interested parties.”


Governance advocates see crowd-sourcing as way to fix Internet ills Statement on NetMundial Internet Governance Initiative (Department of Commerce)