ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses key dynamics of the regulatory process as it has developed over the last two decades. It considers how, despite different inflections in different countries, the internet is implicated in a fundamental neoliberal transformation of the power relations inside the regulatory process. According to the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet'. For example, illegal internet content in the UK is overseen not by a government department but by an industry-funded body, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), set up by a group of internet service providers (ISPs) in 1996. Barlow's homage to the liberal principles of the United States (US) Constitution and the freedom of cyberspace were echoed by many internet activists.
