World versus web - Controlling the internet- Interesting discussions

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World versus web

America does not want the United Nations to run the Internet

Consider the differences: the global telephone system is co-ordinated
by a United Nations agency; countries enjoy sovereignty over phone numbers,
have national regulators and license operators. But the internet is managed by
a non-profit organisation that reports to America's Commerce Department;
national laws are hard to enforce and even suffixes (like .es for Spain) exist
in a grey area. A fight is on over whether governments should manage the
internet
more closely.


The battle moves to Geneva on November 23rd for the first meeting of the UN
Working
Group on Internet Governance. Tensions are inevitable among the 40 recently
appointed delegates. Many countries are dissatisfied with the way the
internet's
technical standards are set, the policy for things such as domain names and
valuable internet-protocol numbers (used by computers to connect online).
Today, the system is run by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN). The group was formed in 1998 by America with the help of
business and the informal consent of other countries. Governments are
represented
by an impotent advisory committee.


Many countries complain that even though ICANN is expected to become
independent
in 2006, it will be placed on a private, industry-led footing rather than
under the oversight
of governments themselves. The UN Group is thus an attempt to ease control of
ICANN
away from America and place the internet's underlying infrastructure on an
intergovernmental
basis, much like today's telephone system.


The business community, predictably, prefers the private-sector ICANN. It
echoes the views
of America, that this ensures that the internet's fast pace is not
jeopardised by the politics
and bureaucracy which typify UN agencies. Althoug the internet is
decentralised and hard
to control, the infrastructure that ICANN manages represents the few levers
that governments
have to impose control should they choose to do so. Also at stake is money:
registering
domain names generates about 1 billion USD annually, and assigning new
domains - think .web
or .sex - is a power over very lucrative assets.


Half the UN working group is comprised of government officials, and half from
"civil society"
organisations, academia and industry. It is charged with defining "internet
governance"
and recommending what the role of governments and international organisations
should be
(not a big mystery coming from a group convened by the UN itself). In
addition to ICANN,
the committee will look at general online issues such as spam, network
security, cyber-crime
and the cost of international telecoms bandwidth. The group's report is due
before the second
phase of the UN World Summit on the Information Society in November 2005.

Most countries oppose the current arrangement. China wants ICANN under the
aegis of the UN,
as do most poor countries. European countries once supported America's
private-sector
approach, but are now willing to accept a UN role. Brazil and others want an
intergovernmental
forum where a panoply of internet issues can be discussed, not just ICANN.
The central problem is that ICANN is seen as an expression of American
unilateralism.
Ironically, it was created as a way to internationalise internet technical
management,
but on a private, non-governmental basis. Until 1998 these tasks were done by
an American
computer-science professor under contract with the Defence Department - the
last vestige
of the internet's roots as a military research project. An autonomous ICANN
grounded in the
private sector is still unsatisfactory to other countries because they fear
America's technological
strength means that it will dominate anyway, which is only partially true.


However, the uncomfortable reality for most countries is that American
control of the internet's
domain name system and its spread through the private sector has contributed
most to the
development of the internet. Indeed, many of the countries in the UN working
group - such
as China, Cuba, Iran and Saudi Arabia - have created barriers to internet
use, from filtering
content to banning cheap internet calls. Despite ICANN's flaws, having these
countries
run the network isn't ideal either.


American officials say they "fully support" the UN process. But the country's
conspicuous
absence from the working group gives it leeway to distance itself from
recommendations,
or discredit it. Strikingly, the situation resembles the debates 30 years ago
at UNESCO
over the New World Information and Communication Order, when poor countries
sought
state accreditation of media and control over information. The dispute led
America and
Britain to pull out of the UN body in the mid-1980s, only to return later. If
other countries
push so hard for America to give up control of ICANN only for them to fill
the vacuum,
America's likely reaction will be to hold on to ICANN ever more closely. This
fight will get uglier.

Source: "The Economist", Nov. 20th-26th 2004



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