Internet Governance
Arbitration provides a faster, simpler, and cheaper way of settling disputes. However, the use of arbitration as the main Internet dispute settlement mechanism has a few serious limitations.
First, since arbitration is usually established by prior agreement, it does not cover a wide area of issues when no agreement between parties has been set in advance (libel, various types of responsibilities, cybercrime).
P
Second, many view the current practice of attaching an arbitration clause to regular contracts disadvantageous for the weaker side in the contract (usually an Internet user or an e-commerce customer).
P
Third, some are concerned that arbitration extends precedent-based law (US/UK legal system) globally and gradually suppresses other national legal systems. In the case of e-commerce, this might prove to be more acceptable, given the already high level of unification of substantive rules of commercial law. However, an extension of precedent law has become more delicate in sociocultural issues such as Internet content, where a national legal system reflects specific cultural context.
P
Intellectual property rights (IPR) Knowledge and ideas are key resources in the global economy. The protection of knowledge and ideas, through IPR, has become one of the predominant issues in the Internet governance debate, and has a strong developmentoriented component. IPR have been affected by the development of the Internet, mainly through the digitisation of knowledge and information, as well as through new possibilities for their manipulation. Internet-related IPR include copyright, trademarks, and patents. Other IPR include designs, utility models, trade secrets, geographical indications, and plant varieties. Copyright Copyright only protects the expression of an idea when it is materialised in various forms, such as a book, CD, or computer file. The idea itself is not protected by copyright. In practice, it is sometimes difficult to make a clear distinction between the idea and its expression. The copyright regime has closely followed the technological evolution. Every new invention, such as the printing press, radio, television, and the VCR, has affected both the form and the application of copyright rules. The Internet is no exception. The traditional concept of copyright has been challenged in numerous ways, from those as simple as ‘cutting and pasting’ texts from the 96