Global Governance: Global Challenges that requires Global Solutions

With the development and expansion of "internet sphere" to all over the world, it is enavitable to settle the global goverenment system in communication spheres that over the sovereignity. In this regard, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has been held in December 2003 in Geneva. WSIS also invites new actors besids the governments bodies in global society, a various NGOs and civil society associations. Raboy comments this various actors' participation to WSIS is positive since "the global governance environment in communication is based on the interaction and interdependence of a wide array of actors and policy venues."

It is interesting to see that the organizational structure of the WSIS because Government Division shares the same level of actors with other private sector division and civil society division. This view is a lot different from the traditional point of view that only allows state governments are admitted to be actors in decision making in global agenda. As we can see the global governance is not a concept anymore that only belongs to the state government. This indicates two differenct category in terms of global governance: 1) the expansion of democracy that brings different level of actors' participation onto the level of decision makers and 2) the hardship to reach the concensus on the global governance in communication.

However, even though there is a certain consensus in gloabal governance of decision making among those various groups, it would be much harder to activate the global governance into internet spheres. For example, the 'piracy' is one of the biggest issue in global governance. There were many trials among the governments, it is not actually effectively controlled. For example, England tried to block the piracy the content through the internet. Lord Mandelson in Britain introduced three strike rule against the content piracy through internet. It is the regulation that if they detect any illegal downloaders they will warn them twice and then if they find it agian for third time, the government will disconnect the internet forcefully. Lord Mandelson said "I was shocked to learn that only one in 20 music tracks in the UK is downloaded legally. We cannot sit back and do nothing" but he also admitted that "legislation and enforcement can only ever be part of the solution".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8328820.stm

Within Britain, there were two different opinion appeared against three strike rule. While the music industry related company welcomes the rule for protecting their business, some civil society critics on it that the government should provide better system to download the music with reasonable price and easy access rather than regulate. They argued that it would activate the 'dark net' only. Then, what about the people from foreign county? They can access and download the piracy file of Britain music without holding passport and being in Britain. Of course, they are not regulated by the British government's law. How britain government controls their citizen when they try to download the file from the website where the Britiash government cannot detect? This just show us how difficult it is to regulate the internet spheres.

While there are a lot of negative aspect of global piracy on the contents. I found out one interesting aspect on the 'Korean Wave (Hallyu)'. Some people argued that the piracy actually makes people from the world, especially from China to assess to the Korean entertainment contents easily and this allows Korean Wave goes to all over the world. Now, interestingly, Hallyu brought the huge fortune and fame to Korean entertainment industry.

Internet sphere is a faily new space for people. It is a powerful space with weak governance. As Mattelart said, piracy is a dark side of globalization which the world should seek the solution together, not by the dominant power of the world.