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Maintaining an open internet

Introduction by ISOLDE GOGGIN, President, IIC

A perennial discussion over previous years has been on the sensitive subject of how the internet should be governed – and more particularly who should govern it. It’s no secret that some countries would like to see more power in the hands of (their own) governments and the changes to obscure but important technical processes currently being discussed at the UN could well re-shape the future internet. Jordan Carter sheds much-needed light on this process in his article, ‘How much influence should governments have over the internet?’ He argues that the plural approach, involving all stakeholders, is crucial to the continuing success of, arguably, the greatest innovation of our generation.  

The Digital Markets Act is one of the flagship pieces of EU legislation, but is it working? Now that the compliance deadline has passed, Alena Birrer and Natascha Just review the responses of the designated platforms and their services. They detect a defensive attitude from the platforms and a more adversarial approach to enforcement from the EU. In their article, Francesco Liberatore and Marty Mackowski consider the issue of AI models cooperating in ways that are anti-competitive while Bart van der Sloot finds no easy answers to the rising problem of deepfakes.

These subjects and more will, of course, be debated further at our events during the course of the year, including at our flagship Annual Conference in Bangkok in November. I look forward to seeing you there.