Okinawa meeting tackles governance in lawless cyberspace

THE term "cyber" is used nowadays as a prefix for the myriad things that have to do with computers and with the Internet.

But anyone attending the so-called Cyber 3 conference in Okinawa last weekend - held in conjunction with the World Economic Forum to discuss the challenges of cyber-governance - might have concluded that "cyber-jungle" is the most appropriate word for this virtual domain.

Cyberspace is indeed a jungle, so far as rules and regulations - or rather, the lack thereof - are concerned, even though the word cyber is derived from the Greek for "helmsman" and originally referred to the study of rules and governance.

At the first of what Japan's Cabinet Office, the organiser of the Okinawa conference, hopes will become an annual series of "Davos-like" gatherings in Japan, panels w…