This paper considers the dilemma confronted regarding international governance of the Internet – how sovereign nations, asserting jurisdiction within physically defined boundaries, could ever effectively control behavior on the Internet; and the aspirations of earlier cyber pioneers for cyberspace kept free of the dead hand of regulation. The transition of the Internet, in little more than a decade and a half, from a research and academic tool known to and used by a relatively small number of people, to a central means of political participation, communication, education, public diplomacy, multilateral governance and negotiation, and international commerce, makes it inevitable that issues of Internet governance will be taken up by domestic authorities and by multilateral organizations: too much is at stake, and the perceived pragmatic interests are too great, for these regulatory interests to remain disengaged – whatever theoretical or political preferences may be nurtured. However, the regulatory impact is far from one-way: just as national authorities and international/intergovernmental organizations may be seen as reaching out to incorporate the Internet within their respective areas of competence or jurisdiction, the impact of the Internet itself has been to transform the nature of governance. At the international level, this transformation is felt in a hitherto unprecedented transparency and accessibility of multilateral organizations and processes. Equally, the remarkable diffusion of new commercial opportunities presented by the Internet, including greater access to global markets for smaller enterprises and traders from the developing world, may in time have impact on the way sovereign nations perceive and pursue their economic interests, and the way in which rules governing international trading relations^are construed and negotiated. In the end, studying the area of ‘international governance and the Internet' may concern international governance by the Internet at least as much as international governance of the Internet. Over time, it may transpire that the Internet will transform international governance more than international institutions transform the Internet
