Multi-stakeholder model likely for internet regulation: Berners-Lee

A multi-stakeholder model, involving organisations like the United Nations, appears to be the likely solution to increasing calls for regulating the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, said in Hyderabad.

''At the moment a lot of discussion is going on whether international governance should be done through different countries or if it should be done independently,'' Berners-Lee told journalists at the 20th International World Wide Web conference. ''I think probably we will end up with a multi-stakeholder system where some of it comes from organisations like United Nations and foundations.''

Acknowledged widely as the founder of the internet – he developed the world wide web while working at the European Particle Physics lab, CERN, in 1989 – Berners-Lee admitted that regulating the net was a complicated matter. ''It's not very simple to govern the net or cyber-crime,'' he said. ''It is very complicated as there is the question about which aspect of the internet should be governed by which organisation.''

Berners-Lee admitted there was need to monitor the internet by a global body; but monitoring was different from intervention, he pointed out. Governments or large corporations should not be allowed to control the internet, which should be seen as a neutral media.

The question of internet governance and the need for a mechanism to control cyber-crime were complicated, he said. ''There is a problem of jurisdiction, of coordination among law enforcement services across different countries,'' he explained. ''Which aspect of internet should be governed by what sort of international organisation? Currently, there is a lot of discussion going on whether it should be done through countries or independently.''

Coordinating between the different governments and law enforcement agencies was also a tough task, said Berners-Lee, who is now the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a web standards organisation. He is also the director of the World Wide Web Foundation, which funds and coordinates efforts to enhance the benefits of the net, and is also founding director of the Web Science Trust, which promotes research and education in web science.