Commentary: Time to Hug a Bureaucrat

Abstract

This panel, “Regulatory Aspects of Internet Governance,” unites three of the most serious, detail-oriented scholars of the regulation of information technology. Indeed, the three papers in this session share a commitment to detailed descriptions of regulatory regimes. Professor Weiser’s and Professor Speta’s papers concentrate on the Federal Communication Commission's (“FCC”) authority to regulate the Internet, or at least some of the infrastructure on which the U.S. portion of the Internet depends. Professor Kesan’s paper examines two regulatory regimes, one self-regulatory (BBBOnline) and the other perhaps unique (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ (“ICANN”) Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (“UDRP”)). The papers differ somewhat in their motivations. The Weiser and Speta papers treat the issue of the correct scope of the FCC’s authority as an end in itself; the Kesan paper examines its cases in hopes of making more general observations about e-commerce regulation.

Keywords: Internet governance, information technology, Internet regulation, cyberlaw, ICANN, UDRP, BBBOnline, FCC