Posted on 11/11/2005 2:06:43 PM PST by DogBarkTree
FRANKFURT, GERMANY - -- On the global Internet these days, the United States is less trusted and more alone. The worldwide network was born on U.S. shores, but that matters little to the growing number of nations now demanding shared control.
An escalating feud over Internet governance is threatening to transform a U.N. summit in Tunisia next week into an acrimonious showdown between the United States and challengers including the European Union.
The debate is over whether Washington, through its oversight of a quasi-independent agency, should continue as the ultimate administrator of all the Web's domains -- not only over ".com" but also the country-specific ones such as ".cn" for China.
At its essence, the struggle is over an information superstructure that is already the main conduit of world commerce. It is also about free speech and information control. The arbiters of Internet policy could profoundly shape international relations in coming years.
"I am torn about this, as I suspect many Internet law experts are. On the one hand, basic principles of international law suggest that a common carrier essential to commerce in all nations should be internationally controlled," said Frank Pasquale, a professor at Seton Hall Law School in Newark, N.J.
"On the other hand," Pasquale added, "many of the countries most eager to impose international control also have bad records on free speech issues, political prisoners."
The so-called World Summit on the Information Society was originally conceived to address the digital divide -- the gap between information haves and have-nots -- by raising both consciousness and funds for projects.
Instead, it has centered largely on Internet governance: oversight of the main computers that control traffic on the Internet by acting as its master directories so Web browsers and e-mail programs can find other computers.
Although the U.S. government has largely delegated management to a private organization with international board members, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, it has ultimate veto power over all decisions.
Washington set a course for confrontation when it declared over the summer that it will retain such oversight indefinitely, despite what many countries thought was a long-standing policy to one day completely turn the function over to ICANN.
The EU responded in September by insisting that some sort of new combination of governments and the private sector share the responsibility of policing the Internet. Before, the push for an international takeover of ICANN mostly came from such developing countries as Brazil, South Africa and China.
"Unilateral control by the U.S. government would be very sad," EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said. "They just have to give up their unilateral control and everything will be fine."
The reasons for resentment of U.S. control are numerous, beginning with objections to U.S. foreign policy.
On actual Internet-related issues, there's frustration that the countries that got online first -- the United States and western Europe, chiefly -- gobbled up most of the available addresses required for computers to connect, leaving developing nations with a limited supply to share.
There are also complaints that governments can't easily control their own domains -- changing administrators for country-code domains can take years.
Countries such as Pakistan, India and China and several in Africa -- where many potential users know little, if any, English -- want quicker approval for domain name suffixes in their languages, something on which ICANN is moving like molasses.
Nonetheless, much of the criticism of U.S. control is philosophical: If governments already handle public services such as delivering food and water, why should they cede something as important as the Internet to another country?
What critics seek varies and remains in many cases vague.
Some want an international body that would address issues ICANN doesn't currently oversee, plagues like spam and security. Others want ICANN or a replacement technical organization to answer not to the Commerce Department but to an international organ, possibly under the United Nations.
Exactly. We are doing this right and the UN or some international commission cannot be relied upon.
AND, THAT'S the VERY reason we SHOULD MAINTAIN CONTROL!!!
Are there a lot of computer users in the Third World?
bang on
assholes
who developed it?
whats the meaning of intellectual property?
rentals, leases and taxes
Remind me again why we let them use our internet?
Ya beat me to it. If the Dems are sad, I am happy. If the thugs at the UN are sad, I am happy. If the Euroweenies and their buddies are sad, I am happy.
Gosh. Life should be so easy.
Socialists like vague regulations. I don't.
Next!
Why don't they just make their own Internet? This one is ours. I have no problem with the EU forming their own.
And, what are we charging them?
"Unilateral control by the U.S. government would be very sad," EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said. "They just have to give up their unilateral control and everything will be fine."
What the hell does this clown mean by WOULD BE?
What IS....IS.
If Bubba taught us anyting, its what is...is.
Does the US Gummint control the Internet or even domain name extensions? That's the problem with these third-world democracies: they see either their neighborhood mafioso or Gummint. They have no idea how capitalism works.
Who DEVELOPED and
BUILT the oil fields that OPEC
became OPEC with?
yeah and I say that we send them Al Gore to help!
Our oil supply is on other shores.... I demand shared control!!!
(crickets)
:)
by all means, feel free to design and build something better any time you wish... you useless eaters you!!!
However, realizing how bad it has become, a group of entrepeneurs will create the next paradigm, a new "internet", and the U.S. will migrate to that, leaving that old crappy internet to the rest of the world, who will soon be complaining for a Piece of the Action.
TS
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