In recent times, the rate at which business entities are investing heavily in the provision of broadband internet access has been impressive. The Glo-1 submarine cable, a multi-million dollar project from Glo Nigeria is a submarine cable of 100,000km with landing points in Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Mauritania, Morocco, Portugal, Spain and United Kingdom (UK) has a bandwidth capacity of about 640 gigabytes has been operational since the last quarter of 2009. Enter Main one cable system been rolled out by MainOne Ltd. is set to go live in June 2010. This 14,000km long submarine fibre optic cable stretches from Portugal to South Africa with landing points in Sexial in Portugal, Lagos in Nigeria, Accra in Ghana and South Africa will provide high speed internet capacity of 1.92 terabits. The boldest determination so far is the West Africa System (WACS) planned by a consortium of telecommunication companies. WACS will link South-Africa with UK along the western coast of Africa. The design capacity is projected to be at least 3.84 terabits.
While these ventures seem to be a welcome development as it will go a long way in not only providing high speed internet connectivity but will also increase the rate of internet penetration of a country that has been reported (internet world stats) to have 23, 982, 200 (16.1%) of its population access the internet in 2009, me continue to think in the face of this 20th century technological evolution whether Nigeria has lived up to its responsibility under the Internet Governance Forum established during the second World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) held in 2005 in Tunis.
No doubt the internet has changed the way we now live and has impacted tremendously into our lives, it has also spurn myriads of new challenges albeit issues relating to how it is used. Such issues include cybercrime, the protection of children online, internet privacy and copyright infringement amongst many others. All these issues have necessitated a proper implementation of the appropriate internet government solution to mitigate the risks associated with the use of the internet.
The WSIS proposed a working definition of internet governance as “Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector, and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet” In Nigeria, the emerging issues arising from increased internet usage are:
1. Cybercrime: The ubiquitous nature of the internet has enabled communication on a global scale across computer networks. This has favoured criminals in using the internet as a tool in the perpetration of criminal offences. Prominent examples of these are fraud, identity theft and phishing scams. For a developing nation like Nigeria, finding a response strategy and solution has become fundamental in the beneficial use of the internet. In recent times, Nigeria has come under international pressure to take actions over financial scams facilitated through email services. In 2006, National White Collar Crime Center reported that losses related to the popular Nigerian email fraud averaged about 5,100 USD each. Though Nigeria in response to this challenge ratified the convention on Cybercrime but is yet to enact the Draft Bill on Computer Security and Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Bill 2005.
2. Child Protection Online: The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has come up with a global initiative with the objectives of identifying risks and vulnerabilities of children (and minors) in cyberspace, creating awareness for these, help in the development of practical tools that will help to minimize these risks and lastly to provide a forum for knowledge sharing for best practises. The child online protection initiative will guarantee that the child is not exposed to harmful or inappropriate content which includes a wide variety of materials such as pornography, violent content and the like. It is important that Nigeria tap into this initiative and adopt strategies to protect our children who will become the leaders tomorrow.
3. Internet Privacy: According to American privacy expert Steven Rambam, “Privacy is dead-get over it”. While a number of industry expert seem to agree with him, National governments are still work to guarantee the privacy of the individual in this age of information explosion. With the proliferation of the internet and its technologies, a lot of individuals are increasingly finding it difficult to control their personal information in cyberspace or decide on whom this information should be disclosed to. In this age of information explosion, personal information if not properly protected could be misused to the detriment of the data subject, this is constantly been manifested by online social and electronic commerce platform where personal information has been mishandled and compromised by the owner of such platforms or by individuals participating on such platforms. It becomes imperative for the Nigerian government to intervene in this instance to safeguard and enforce this fundamental human right.
4. Copyright Infringement: In the words of Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, “the fear is that cyberspace will become a place where copyright can be defeated”. Copyright is granted protection under both international and national laws, the internet has made it possible for works in which copyright subsists to be easily distributed across computer networks, thereby implicating the owners right of both distribution and communication to the public. Peer-to-peer (p2p) technologies have a role in the infringement of copyright, this technology connects an individual’s computer to another computer whereby information (mostly copyright works) is easily retrieved and distributed over the internet. No doubt, the high speed internet connectivity in Nigeria plays a prominent role in this phenomenon. Because of the near impossibility of identifying the alleged infringers, National governments and copyright owners have targeted Internet Service Providers (ISP) as facilitators of copyright infringement across their network. This has resulted into laws which provides safe harbours for ISPs and defines instances in which they will be exempted from copyright infringement liability under their national laws.
The growing awareness of the social, economic and legal dynamics of the internet has impacted on the Nigerian society and has brought to the front burner the problems associated with its increased usage and has crystallized into topical issues under the internet governance forum. For broadband services to benefit the Nigerian community, the stakeholders in Nigeria (including the Government and ISPs) has a constant and continuous role to play by intervening with policy and technological solutions that will shape the way the internet will be legitimately used in Nigeria leading to the achievement of the goals set under the Internet Governance Forum.
Conclusively the statement of John and Post that “the rise of an electronic medium that disregards geographical boundaries throws the law into disarray by creating entirely new phenomena that need to become the subject of clear legal rules that cannot be governed, satisfactorily, by any current territorially based sovereign” seems to come to mind in the Nigerian case.
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