The U.S. oversees — but does not control — the Web through the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit organization based in Marina del Rey, Calif., that was created in 1998 by the Commerce Department.
Most of the world wants that to change, giving other countries much more control.
But what type of governance would they offer in its place?
Here is how Dr. Milton Mueller of the Syracuse University School of Information Studies described the recent goings-on in Geneva, where the UN’s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has been debating the future of Internet governance:
- The politics in Geneva were driven by an alliance between the European Union, states critical of ICANN such as Brazil, and authoritarian states such as China, Iran and Pakistan. All agreed to create an 'Inter-Governmental Council for global public policy and oversight of Internet governance.' Unlike ICANN, this Council would exclude civil society and the private sector from participating in policy making. It would set up a top-down, regulatory relationship between a governmental Council and the people who actually produce and use the Internet.
Until late September, the U.S. could count on the EU as a balancing weight against those pressing for control of the Internet through a global body. A State Department official characterizes the EU’s new position as “an historic shift in the regulatory approach to the Internet from one that is based on private sector leadership to a government, top-down control of the Internet.”
Unfortunately, as Professor Mueller points out, the original idea of for Internet governance appears to have fallen by the wayside:
- What seems to have been lost in the shuffle is the idea of distributed, cooperative control that involves individuals, technical and academic groups, Internet businesses and limited, lawful interactions with governments. The idea that nation-states should not have the ability to arbitrarily intervene in the Internet's operation whenever they feel like it, but should be bound by clear, negotiated constitutional principles, has been crowded out of the debate.