Milton Mueller
Biographic Data
| ID | 284909 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Milton Mueller |
| GIVEN NAMES | Milton |
| FAMILY NAME | Mueller |
| SIGNATURE | MUELLER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Syracuse University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9114-8259 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 82 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
It's just distributed computing: Rethinking AI governance
What we now lump under the unitary label “artificial intelligence” is not a single technology, but a highly varied set of machine learning applications enabled and supported by a globally ubiquitous system of distributed computing. The paper introduces a 4 part conceptual framework for analyzing the structure of that system, which it labels the digital ecosystem. What we now call “AI” is then shown to be a general functionality of distributed com…
Exploring the role of data enclosure in the digital political economy
Regulation of platform market access by the United States and China: Neo‐mercantilism in digital services
China and the United States host the world's largest digital platforms. Platforms are multisided markets that facilitate value‐creating exchanges among users, such as social media, e‐commerce, software QJ;application downloads, search, email, and cloud services. Internet access and the purely digital nature of many of the products and services make digital platforms potentially global in scope. This means that the rules and restrictions governing…
Platform governance by competing systems of political economy: The United States and China
The United States and China have the two largest and most innovative internet economies, yet there are major differences between their political systems, businesses, foreign policies and approaches to international law. This special issue examines the way the governance of digital platforms characterizes two profoundly different systems of political economy. Some observers believe that the American and Chinese systems of political economy are inc…
Standardizing Security: Surveillance, Human Rights, and the Battle Over Tls 1.3
This is a detailed case study of the development of a new cybersecurity standard, Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3, and its implications for the privacy of Internet users and the security and accountability of network operators. It contributes to a theoretical debate about whether protocols or standards can have values or can be considered political. We find that while the design choices in TLS 1.3 do enable greater security, the interests of t…
Against Sovereignty in Cyberspace
In discussing the historical origins of sovereignty, Jens Bartelson (2018, 510) wrote, “Making sense of sovereignty . . . entails making sense of its component terms—supreme authority and territory—and how these terms were forged together into a concept.” The question of sovereignty in cyberspace, however, inverts this historical “forging together,” as territoriality and authority are sundered in cyberspace. This paper argues that attempts to app…
Communications and the Internet
This chapter examines the transformative effect of the Internet and the rise of computer technology on international organization of communications. It begins by describing the liberalization of telecommunication services, which provides the essential point of departure for understanding the contemporary situation. It then identifies key international organizations involved in Internet governance. This survey of organizations is heavily biased to…
The Global War for Internet Governance by Laura DeNardis (review)
Policing the Network: Using DPI for Copyright Enforcement
Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and other network surveillance techniques have become important factors in the policy debate over online copyright infringement. These new technical capabilities reopened an old debate about the responsibility of internet service providers (ISPs) for policing the internet. This paper attempts to understand the extent to which new technological capabilities have the power to alter regulatory principles. It examines pol…
Where is the governance in Internet governance
The governance of the Internet provides one of the most important arenas in which new ideas regarding Internet studies can be applied and tested. This paper critiques the prevailing conceptualization of Internet governance. The label is routinely applied to the study of a few formal global institutions with limited or no impact on governance, but not to studies of the many activities that actually shape and regulate the use and evolution of the I…
The end of the net as we know it? Deep packet inspection and internet governance
Advances in network equipment now allow internet service providers to monitor the content of data packets in real-time and make decisions about how to handle them. If deployed widely this technology, known as deep packet inspection (DPI), has the potential to alter basic assumptions that have underpinned internet governance to date. The article explores the way internet governance is responding to deep packet inspection and the political struggle…
Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance
How institutions for Internet governance are emerging from the tension between the territorially bound nation-state and a transnational network society. When the prevailing system of governing divides the planet into mutually exclusive territorial monopolies of force, what institutions can govern the Internet, with its transnational scope, boundless scale, and distributed control? Given filtering/censorship by states and concerns over national cy…
Info-communism? Ownership and freedom in the digital economy
This paper takes a new look at the debate over commons and property in information and communications. It warns against recreating the old communist-capitalist ideological divide by framing the movement for informational commons as "info-communist." The spectre of communism haunts the movement because of an unresolved ideological tension in its ethical and philosophical foundations. The case for free software and open information contains both de…
Regulation in Cyberspace: Control in the Online Environment . Andrew Murray
This foray into Internet governance is described by its author, London School of Economics law professor Andrew Murray, as an attempt to develop a “uniquely European contribution to the study of cy
Disrupting Global Governance: The Internet Whois Service, Icann, and Privacy
The Internet's Whois service allows anyone to type a domain name into a Web interface and then receive the name and contact details of whoever has registered it. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) contracts make it mandatory to provide indiscriminate public access to this information. Data protection laws in Europe and other countries conflict with this ICANN policy, yet Whois has remained in place for a decade. This arti…
The Internet and Global Governance: Principles and Norms for a New Regime
Since the mid-1990s, efforts have been under way to construct an international regime for global Internet governance. Beginning with the formation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, efforts at regime construction were a main focus of the 2001–2005 UN World Summit on the Information Society. However, little progress was made toward an international agreement. This reflected policymakers' illadvised attempt to shortcut regi…
China's Telecommunications Market: Entering a New Competitive Age . Ding Lu , Chee Kong Wong
The WTO and Global Convergence in Telecommunications and Audio-Visual Services
This edited collection consolidates research on the current and future perspectives of international trade law applicable to telecommunications services and audiovisual services in a context of convergence. It is divided into three main parts. The first part analyses the current regulatory framework applicable to telecommunications services in the context of the WTO, including the controversial issues of accounting rates and international competi…
Civil Society and the Shaping of Communication–Information Policy: Four Decades of Advocacy
This article initiates exploratory empirical research on how civil society collective action has reacted to and affected communication–information policy (CIP), a policy domain that has been reshaped by technological and industrial change. It reviews the relevant theory on social movements, citizens groups, and interest groups from political science. Data are gathered on two dimensions of the research question: (1) We quantify the number of publi…
Revitalizing Communication and Information Policy Research
Additional informationNotes on contributorsMilton MuellerMilton Mueller is Professor at Syracuse University School of Information Studies and co-director of The Convergence Center.Becky LentzBecky Lentz is a program officer for electronic media policy in the Media, Arts, and Culture unit at the Ford Foundation in New York City
Rough Justice: A Statistical Assessment of Icann's Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy
Long-standing conflict between domain name registrants and trademark holders prompted the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to create a global, mandatory arbitration procedure known as the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The UDRP has been used in 2166 cases involving 3938 domain names as of 1 November 2000. The policy gives the initiator of a complaint, generally a trademark holder, the right to choose which IC…
Rough Justice: A Statistical Assessment of Icann's Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy
Long-standing conflict between domain name registrants and trademark holders prompted the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to create a global, mandatory arbitration procedure known as the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The UDRP has been used in 2166 cases involving 3938 domain names as of 1 November 2000. The policy gives the initiator of a complaint, generally a trademark holder, the right to choose which IC…
Universal service policies as wealth redistribution
Media Technology and Society: A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet. Brian Winston
China in the Information Age: Telecommunications and the Dilemmas of Reform
From the Publisher: China's economic and social progress toward modernization is one of the defining features of the last quarter of the 20th century. The emergence of China coincides with another development of equally important international implications--the revolution in information and telecommunication technology. But how compatible are the new China and the information age? The Chinese Communist Party intends to embrace market-oriented eco…
Against Sovereignty in Cyberspace
In discussing the historical origins of sovereignty, Jens Bartelson (2018, 510) wrote, “Making sense of sovereignty . . . entails making sense of its component terms—supreme authority and territory—and how these terms were forged together into a concept.” The question of sovereignty in cyberspace, however, inverts this historical “forging together,” as territoriality and authority are sundered in cyberspace. This paper argues that attempts to app…
The Internet and Global Governance: Principles and Norms for a New Regime
Since the mid-1990s, efforts have been under way to construct an international regime for global Internet governance. Beginning with the formation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, efforts at regime construction were a main focus of the 2001–2005 UN World Summit on the Information Society. However, little progress was made toward an international agreement. This reflected policymakers' illadvised attempt to shortcut regi…
The end of the net as we know it? Deep packet inspection and internet governance
Advances in network equipment now allow internet service providers to monitor the content of data packets in real-time and make decisions about how to handle them. If deployed widely this technology, known as deep packet inspection (DPI), has the potential to alter basic assumptions that have underpinned internet governance to date. The article explores the way internet governance is responding to deep packet inspection and the political struggle…
Where is the governance in Internet governance
The governance of the Internet provides one of the most important arenas in which new ideas regarding Internet studies can be applied and tested. This paper critiques the prevailing conceptualization of Internet governance. The label is routinely applied to the study of a few formal global institutions with limited or no impact on governance, but not to studies of the many activities that actually shape and regulate the use and evolution of the I…
China in the Information Age: Telecommunications and the Dilemmas of Reform
From the Publisher: China's economic and social progress toward modernization is one of the defining features of the last quarter of the 20th century. The emergence of China coincides with another development of equally important international implications--the revolution in information and telecommunication technology. But how compatible are the new China and the information age? The Chinese Communist Party intends to embrace market-oriented eco…
Civil Society and the Shaping of Communication–Information Policy: Four Decades of Advocacy
This article initiates exploratory empirical research on how civil society collective action has reacted to and affected communication–information policy (CIP), a policy domain that has been reshaped by technological and industrial change. It reviews the relevant theory on social movements, citizens groups, and interest groups from political science. Data are gathered on two dimensions of the research question: (1) We quantify the number of publi…
The Switchboard Problem: Scale, Signaling, and Organization in Manual Telephone Switching, 1877-1897
A telephone exchange is a radical rearrangement of social space. It brings any two speakers together on demand, regardless of where they are located. By thus collapsing social space, it also vastly expands its scale, making millions of people who would otherwise be inaccessible to each other capable of instant, real-time conversation. The very radicalism of this act of social integration led early developers of telephone switching into one partic…
Rough Justice: A Statistical Assessment of Icann's Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy
Long-standing conflict between domain name registrants and trademark holders prompted the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to create a global, mandatory arbitration procedure known as the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The UDRP has been used in 2166 cases involving 3938 domain names as of 1 November 2000. The policy gives the initiator of a complaint, generally a trademark holder, the right to choose which IC…
Universal Service from the Bottom Up: A Study of Telephone Penetration in Camden, New Jersey
Ethnographic methods and geographic information systems were used to investigate the extent, causes and consequences of telephone disconnection in Camden, NJ. The results have significant implications for public policies intended to promote universal telephone penetration. Universal service is usually perceived as an issue for rural areas and the elderly, but the most extensive pockets of low telephone penetration are found in inner cities, where…
Revitalizing Communication and Information Policy Research
Additional informationNotes on contributorsMilton MuellerMilton Mueller is Professor at Syracuse University School of Information Studies and co-director of The Convergence Center.Becky LentzBecky Lentz is a program officer for electronic media policy in the Media, Arts, and Culture unit at the Ford Foundation in New York City
Le service universel dans l'histoire du téléphone, une reconstruction
L'universalité du service téléphonique est généralement considérée comme le résultat de l'existence d'un monopole réglementé et de mécanismes de redistribution de revenus par voies tarifaires. Cet article fait un examen critique des revendications historiques de ce qu'on appellera ici l'idéologie du service universel. On montre qu'une infrastructure téléphonique généralisée s'est développée aux Etats-Unis entre 1894 et 1921 à cause de la rivalité…
Technology out of control
THE WHALE AND THE REACTOR: A SEARCH FOR LIMITS IN THE AGE OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY by Langdon Winner Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. 200 pp. $17.50 AUTONOMOUS TECHNOLOGY: TECHNICS‐OUT‐OF‐CONTROL AS A THEME IN POLITICAL THOUGHT by Langdon Winner Cambridge: MIT Press. 1977. 386 pp., $7.95 paper TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA edited by Stephen F. Goldberg and Charles R. Strain Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Pr…
Coming to Grips with Marx
MARXISM: PHILOSOPHY AND ECONOMICS by Thomas Sowell. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1985. 281 pp., $15.95, $9.95 (paper
Letters
Technology out of control
THE WHALE AND THE REACTOR: A SEARCH FOR LIMITS IN THE AGE OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY by Langdon Winner Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. 200 pp. $17.50 AUTONOMOUS TECHNOLOGY: TECHNICS‐OUT‐OF‐CONTROL AS A THEME IN POLITICAL THOUGHT by Langdon Winner Cambridge: MIT Press. 1977. 386 pp., $7.95 paper TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA edited by Stephen F. Goldberg and Charles R. Strain Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Pr…
The Switchboard Problem: Scale, Signaling, and Organization in Manual Telephone Switching, 1877-1897
A telephone exchange is a radical rearrangement of social space. It brings any two speakers together on demand, regardless of where they are located. By thus collapsing social space, it also vastly expands its scale, making millions of people who would otherwise be inaccessible to each other capable of instant, real-time conversation. The very radicalism of this act of social integration led early developers of telephone switching into one partic…
The Bell System, and Regional Business: The Telephone in the South, 1877-1920 by Kenneth Lipartito
1114 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE To tell this story, Thomson mined the U.S. Patent Office records. Linking patents with inventors, Thomson was able to find regional links and sketch patterns of connections. Unfortunately, although the work has a great deal of information to offer the economic historian, its presentation does not encourage readership. Except for his discussion of the development of the sewing machine, it is a dry story tha…
The Bell System and Regional Business: The Telephone in the South, 1877-1920
Telecommunications as Infrastructure: A Skeptical View
Le service universel dans l'histoire du téléphone, une reconstruction
L'universalité du service téléphonique est généralement considérée comme le résultat de l'existence d'un monopole réglementé et de mécanismes de redistribution de revenus par voies tarifaires. Cet article fait un examen critique des revendications historiques de ce qu'on appellera ici l'idéologie du service universel. On montre qu'une infrastructure téléphonique généralisée s'est développée aux Etats-Unis entre 1894 et 1921 à cause de la rivalité…
Critical challenges to mass communication scholarship: Why communications policy is passing “mass communication” by: political economy as the missing link
New Definitions and Measures of Telecommunciations Access
Current definitions of telecommunications access are antiquated and overly simplistic. They overlook technological alternatives, overlaps, and interdependencies as well as patterns of usage and the integration of usage into daily lives. Ethnographic observation of communication behavior can be used to construct social indicators of telecommunications access and usage that are based on theories about communication and behavior, not technologies
Universal Service from the Bottom Up: A Study of Telephone Penetration in Camden, New Jersey
Ethnographic methods and geographic information systems were used to investigate the extent, causes and consequences of telephone disconnection in Camden, NJ. The results have significant implications for public policies intended to promote universal telephone penetration. Universal service is usually perceived as an issue for rural areas and the elderly, but the most extensive pockets of low telephone penetration are found in inner cities, where…
China in the Information Age: Telecommunications and the Dilemmas of Reform
From the Publisher: China's economic and social progress toward modernization is one of the defining features of the last quarter of the 20th century. The emergence of China coincides with another development of equally important international implications--the revolution in information and telecommunication technology. But how compatible are the new China and the information age? The Chinese Communist Party intends to embrace market-oriented eco…
Universal service policies as wealth redistribution
Media Technology and Society: A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet. Brian Winston
Rough Justice: A Statistical Assessment of Icann's Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy
Long-standing conflict between domain name registrants and trademark holders prompted the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to create a global, mandatory arbitration procedure known as the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The UDRP has been used in 2166 cases involving 3938 domain names as of 1 November 2000. The policy gives the initiator of a complaint, generally a trademark holder, the right to choose which IC…
Rough Justice: A Statistical Assessment of Icann's Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy
Long-standing conflict between domain name registrants and trademark holders prompted the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to create a global, mandatory arbitration procedure known as the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The UDRP has been used in 2166 cases involving 3938 domain names as of 1 November 2000. The policy gives the initiator of a complaint, generally a trademark holder, the right to choose which IC…
The WTO and Global Convergence in Telecommunications and Audio-Visual Services
This edited collection consolidates research on the current and future perspectives of international trade law applicable to telecommunications services and audiovisual services in a context of convergence. It is divided into three main parts. The first part analyses the current regulatory framework applicable to telecommunications services in the context of the WTO, including the controversial issues of accounting rates and international competi…
Civil Society and the Shaping of Communication–Information Policy: Four Decades of Advocacy
This article initiates exploratory empirical research on how civil society collective action has reacted to and affected communication–information policy (CIP), a policy domain that has been reshaped by technological and industrial change. It reviews the relevant theory on social movements, citizens groups, and interest groups from political science. Data are gathered on two dimensions of the research question: (1) We quantify the number of publi…
Revitalizing Communication and Information Policy Research
Additional informationNotes on contributorsMilton MuellerMilton Mueller is Professor at Syracuse University School of Information Studies and co-director of The Convergence Center.Becky LentzBecky Lentz is a program officer for electronic media policy in the Media, Arts, and Culture unit at the Ford Foundation in New York City
China's Telecommunications Market: Entering a New Competitive Age . Ding Lu , Chee Kong Wong
The Internet and Global Governance: Principles and Norms for a New Regime
Since the mid-1990s, efforts have been under way to construct an international regime for global Internet governance. Beginning with the formation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, efforts at regime construction were a main focus of the 2001–2005 UN World Summit on the Information Society. However, little progress was made toward an international agreement. This reflected policymakers' illadvised attempt to shortcut regi…
Info-communism? Ownership and freedom in the digital economy
This paper takes a new look at the debate over commons and property in information and communications. It warns against recreating the old communist-capitalist ideological divide by framing the movement for informational commons as "info-communist." The spectre of communism haunts the movement because of an unresolved ideological tension in its ethical and philosophical foundations. The case for free software and open information contains both de…
Regulation in Cyberspace: Control in the Online Environment . Andrew Murray
This foray into Internet governance is described by its author, London School of Economics law professor Andrew Murray, as an attempt to develop a “uniquely European contribution to the study of cy
Disrupting Global Governance: The Internet Whois Service, Icann, and Privacy
The Internet's Whois service allows anyone to type a domain name into a Web interface and then receive the name and contact details of whoever has registered it. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) contracts make it mandatory to provide indiscriminate public access to this information. Data protection laws in Europe and other countries conflict with this ICANN policy, yet Whois has remained in place for a decade. This arti…
Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance
How institutions for Internet governance are emerging from the tension between the territorially bound nation-state and a transnational network society. When the prevailing system of governing divides the planet into mutually exclusive territorial monopolies of force, what institutions can govern the Internet, with its transnational scope, boundless scale, and distributed control? Given filtering/censorship by states and concerns over national cy…
Computer Science (26 works) · Political science (26 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Business (16 works) · Economics (14 works) · Law (13 works) · The Internet (12 works) · World Wide Web (12 works) · Corporate governance (11 works)