Proceedings of 10th Annual London Business Research Conference
10 - 11 August 2015, Imperial College, London, UK
ISBN: 978-1-922069-81-8
Cyberspace: Self-Regulation as a New Form for Managing
the Internet
Jackson Adams and Mohamad Albakajai
Activities conducted over the Internet may acquire a cross-border dimension, and
potential legal disputes resulting from these activities may lead to a conflict of laws.
Although some international laws and rules do exist for resolving such disputes, yet they
are not uniform. For instance, online privacy laws differ from one country to another with
no proper and sufficient international consensus on the need for laws that protect the
privacy of online users.
Hence, this study is intended to be a call for establishing a new form for regulating the
activities associated with the cyberspace. This is due to the fact that the traditional
pattern of international lawmaking – which is very slow - no longer suffices for regulating
and managing the fast growing demands of the cyberspace. Focusing on the growing
role of individuals and corporations in developing the internet, the new form is based on
self-regulating initiatives that incorporates the efforts of the civil society as well as the
business corporations.
The study also advocates that in regulating the Cyberspace, governments should not
define their priorities based solely on the risks associated with cybercrime; they should
recognize that the Internet is also used as a peaceful instrument of global
communications. So the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides that "all
human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”, should be the point of
departure for Internet governance (IG).
As online activities are conceived as freedom of speech or expression and freedom to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas, the new form of managing the Internet
should be shaped by establishing cooperation between the governments and the
professionals with experience in the legal and technical fields. The international
conventions on the law of the sea and on the environment are good examples of such
wide cooperation. So, such cooperation, if it is established, will lead to a human rights
online framework convention.
As for the data used in this study, the researchers will be drawing on relevant cases
demonstrating that the internet is being governed best through the cooperation between
the governments and the private actors. The cases will show how the international use of
Cyberspace weakens the effectiveness of the national as well as the international laws,
leading to a threat to the sovereignty of the states. The examples used will include
Wikipedia and Facebook – which will help the researchers proving that citizens of the
Internet community have an important role in managing and governing the Internet.
Key Words: Cyberspace, International Law, Self-Regulation, Internet Management.
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Dr. Jackson Adams, University of Essex, Essex Business School, Colchester, UK
Dr. Mohamad Albakajai, University of Essex, Essex Business School, Colchester, UK