Abstract
A lot has happened in the world of Internet governance this year, starting with revelations by Eric Snowden of the NSA's extensive surveillance program. That sent a shock wave through the Internet world, especially for those arguing in favor of not regulating the Internet (i.e., those in favor of a "multi-stakeholder" framework for Internet governance). Then in March of this year, the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Agency (NTIA) announced it was starting a process to consider transitioning oversight of some technical functions, like Internet numbering resources, protocol assignments, and management of domain names, performed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), away from IANA over to the "multi-stakeholder community." So although by any measure, it's been a big year for multi-stakeholderism in
Internet governance, what does it all mean?