In the current era, the commercial nature of the internet seems like a foregone conclusion. However, during the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton, the structures and guidelines for how this global system would operate were unresolved. Clinton took direct steps to ensure the commercialization of the internet and made a deliberate effort to gain agreement with public and private interest groups both in the United States and abroad. This article examines those efforts, focusing on three key questions present in the global discourse: First, where does oversight for internet structures come from, both in terms of country of origin, but also in terms of public versus private sectors? Second, how do traditional economic concerns translate to this new system? And finally, what protections are prioritized in this system? In looking at the patterns in that discourse, I argue that the Clinton Administration's leadership in the area of internet governance projected a concern for an open, global internet while in actuality, the Administration pursued a U.S.-centric approach to governance that prioritized commercial interests. Given the continued importance of national sovereignty in debates around internet governance, the decisions being made in the 1990s demand further consideration.

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In April 2014, after Edward Snowden revealed a widespread, global spying program carried out by the U.S. government against citizens and world leaders, Brazil hosted a meeting of NETmundial, the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance, to discuss moving away from a U.S.-centric oversight of internet governance structures and towards a global multistakeholder model. In 2016, the contract between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the U.S. Department of Commerce expired, nearly 20 years after it was first established. While the end of that contract did meaningfully address some of the concerns raised by NETmundial, there are many ways in which the U.S.’s powerful position in developing the early commercial internet is still visible. This research seeks to address the question: In what ways were early decisions about the governance of the commercial web shaped by cultural imperialist logics and how was that reflected in policy developed in the mid to late 1990s? I address this question using archival analysis focusing on the Ira Magaziner Electronic Commerce papers at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, arguing that the U.S. incorporated little to no input from many countries, a move that stood in contradiction with narratives coming from that administration that highlighted the internet’s potential for open, equitable, global participation.

Over the past few years, Facebook has found itself mired in out controversy after the next. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the company received criticism when it was revealed that Russian groups had created fraudulent social media accounts on their site in order to interfere with the elections – creating anti-Hillary groups, groups stoking fears of minority populations, and materials accusing the Democratic Party of voter fraud in an attempt to discourage voter turn-out. The question is, how did we get to this point; the point where foreign entities are affecting political outcomes in other countries through a website created by a private American corporation on a media platform wherein the lines between the cultures and legal systems of different countries is sometimes difficult to draw? To answer this, I look to the policies written by the U.S. Government in the 1990s on the issue of internet governance. I argue that the focus on including commercial interests in these early governance structures has had a lasting impact on the ways in which the internet operates to this day. In considering recent controversies that stem from the blurring lines of online sovereignty, wherein commercial and governmental interests become interwoven without a clear sense of who bears the responsibility when the system operates against the interests of its users, it becomes essential to consider the historical foundations which may have led to this moment.

In October 2016, the contract between the United States Department of Commerce and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) officially expired. This contract represented a long-standing and close relationship between the United States government and ICANN, a relationship that positioned the U.S. as a kind of linchpin in determining the shape and coordination of the global, extraterritorial internet. This research seeks to address the question: what interests and values shaped ICANN at the time of its establishment and in what ways do debates about this system reflect broader concerns about the U.S.-centric nature of early internet governance policy? I address this question using archival analysis focusing on the Ira Magaziner Electronic Commerce papers at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. In examining this archive, there are repeated concerns about the U.S.-centric nature of early internet governance policy, concerns that were clear as early as the mid-1990s and which remained at issue with the oversight of ICANN until 2016. While espousing the values of competitive free-market, the internet governance policy promoted by the U.S. government during the Clinton Administration raised concerns about the concentration of power and potentially monopolistic control of the network by a single nation. Understanding the foundations of debates around oversight and multistakeholderism that took place as early as the 1990s helps us better understand more recent changes in internet governance and also help contextualize and ground discussions about how to best create a truly representative global internet in the future.