Governance and the Proliferation of International Electronic Markets Presented Before The Seventh Conference on Organizational

A variety of issues and public policy decisions are increasingly important to the proliferation of international electronic markets. In the United States, and internationally, key issues under review include the imposition of access fees on data service providers, mandated universal Internet access, taxation of data service providers/goods and services, intellectual property/copyright, information warfare, and cryptography. The Internet, an expected key information conduit for the proliferation of international electronic commerce, has been somewhat U.S. centric, in that the architects and users were a small elite male homogeneous population. Since 1995 this has changed due to: reduction of Internet funding/administration by the U.S. Government; the Internet user base has become heterogeneous, reflecting the makeup of society; regionalization of Internet architecture and telecommunication deregulation; lawyer interest in cyberspace. Although the Internet has had few rules and regulations, an ad-hoc consensual governance process grew up to address Internet standards and engineering needs. While bodies suc