The Groundswell of Internet Governance Initiatives

Although I haven’t blogged about it yet, I have been thinking a lot about the SOPA initiative from a few weeks ago.  I’m not sure we’ve ever seen an issue that encourages multiple major internet properties (Google, Craigslist, Wikipedia, etc.) to band together.  With SOPA there was true collegiality about how the Internet should not be governed.

Personally, I’m glad SOPA was discarded.  While I see the need for a way to police the Internet, for intellectual property concerns as well as other issues, the ramifications of SOPA were too heavy handed.

And yesterday I was an observer in an electronic conversation about how the UN may someday (soon?) be considering how the Internet is governed.  An editorial about this issue can be found here.

As with most political discussions, there are factions on both sides of this debate.  The trends I’m seeing are that most people in the security field do not want to see UN control over the Internet while it sounds like many countries are looking to control the Internet as a way of monetizing and/or policing it.

The one thing I most agree with at this time is that the UN will likely not move quickly on this.

My question is: how long will it take before some semblance of governance has settled across the Internet?  It seems like we are still years away.  Anyone have comments?