The computer, modem and intranet network cabling belonging to Rafael Antonio Broche Moreno sits on a desk at his home in Havana. Home Internet connections are banned for all but a handful of Cubans, and the government charges nearly a quarter of a month’s salary for an hour online in government-run hotels and Internet centers. Ramon Espinosa

On Thursday, in a large Romanesque ballroom on Manhattan’s Amsterdam Avenue, the people who make the big decisions relating to the underlying technology of what we call the "internet" sat discussing the future.

There's a huge power shift happening in this world, away from US control and toward a more international approach. Most of the world-leading experts in this field were OK with this.

But at least one internet pioneer, Vint Cerf, who now works for Google, worried that this could break the internet into warring fiefdoms that won't work well together.

This conference on Internet Governance and Cyber-Security, held at at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, invited some of the best-known internet scholars and policymakers to discuss the technical and meaty topic known as "Internet Governance."

Looming in the background was last year's announcement that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a US government agency, would relinquish its oversight of the global internet naming authority — the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

While this issue isn’t making the front pages, it is a huge shift in power for the bureaucracies keeping the internet afloat. ICANN is the private nonprofit organization that oversees how domains are named and assigned. Up until now, the US has had formal oversight.

Fadi Chehadé. Wikimedia

Despite this shakeup, Fadi Chehadé — the president and CEO of ICANN — assured the room that everything was okay. "The logical infrastructure of the internet is safe, resilient, and well governed," he said. "Most of the world now agrees on that."



Sitting in the same row with Chehadé was former ICANN chair Paul Twomey, along with the president and CEO of the Internet Society, Kathryn Brown, and Beth Noveck, who runs New York University’s GovLab.

With the upcoming NTIA transition, they said, officials are scrambling to figure out how every country with a stake in the internet will get its voice heard. The term "multistakeholder internet governance" was the key buzzword, referring to a process of policymaking that attempts to include all involved parties using a consensus-based model.

While this sounds like a logical way for governing technology used by the whole world, not everyone is thrilled.

Google’s chief internet evangelist, Vint Cerf, said during his opening remarks that a multistakeholder model could lead to some tension, and perhaps fragmentation of the internet.

For example, one country's laws may not coincide with other perceptions of how online content should be disseminated. This could lead to localized data storage and perhaps even halt cross-border data flow. Germany is a great example of a country taking measures to keep its data within its borders. To Cerf, this is a frightening prospect.

Brown, on the other hand, believes that the multistakeholder model is just what is needed. "We’re not looking for global agreement," the Internet Society president said. "We’re looking for agreements; we’re looking for consensus where it needs to happen." This model is a way to reach decisions "that are sustainable, that are trusted, that are transparent," she added.

Next goal: Improving the integrity of information online



Chehadé believes the next hurdle for the global internet community doesn’t relate the underlying infrastructure of the internet. Instead, he thinks it's time to focus on "what happens on the internet."

He called this "internet integrity."

He went on, "When I see something on the internet written about me ... How do you know it is a high integrity item? How do you know this is the truth?" Chehadé believes that the next issue to be tackled is not how the internet works (which is the infrastructure that ICANN has been overseeing for decades), but how to create a better way to ensure and protect the content disseminated on the internet.

Even with this seemingly gargantuan project, the attendees seemed pleased with future prospects. In years past there were questions about how associations like ICANN could make proper internet decisions that relate to the global user base. That’s no longer the case.