Abstract

There is no doubt that the term ‘governance’ of the Internet or of the Cyberspace is full of ambiguity. In the present time, it has substituted the government for a kind of liberal concept that mixes private and public authorities, because, as said sometimes, the ‘users’ disregarded the way the traditional authorities of control were tempting to regulate the Internet without taking into account its aspects of ‘wild frontier’ and ‘borderless geography’. A mistrust climate, we could say.

Moreover, a socio-political question became a technical question: the governance of the Internet was very often regarded as equal to the domain names management.

But curiously those who promoted the term of governance are today the same who claim for the restoration of a climate of mutual trust: the Global Business Dialog on eCommerce (GBDe); the programme eConfidence of the European Commission; the ‘labellisation’ organisations: BBBOnLine, WebTrust, TRUSTe; …

Most probably the hope for expanding eCommerce is not yet reaching the expectations of those who organized its development. But what guarantees do they offer with their self-regulation systems to meet the expectations of those who ‘resist’. Above all, how to restore trust and confidence if, as they say, the “codes of ethics/conduct are at the core of the Trustmarks”?

A careful attention and scrutiny of those codes is showing at the present time deficiencies in protecting those whose they try to gain trust and confidence.

We’ll suggest minimum criteria for those codes being more trusted, and getting more legitimacy.