[WSIS CS-Plenary] Tech Firms Back Bush Net Effort

Fri Nov 4 13:24:36 GMT 2005

  From: http://www.news.com/

Tech firms back Bush Net effort

By Declan McCullagh
http://news.com.com/Tech+firms+back+Bush+Net+effort/2100-1028_3-5931684.html

WASHINGTON--Less than two weeks before a United 
Nations summit on the Internet begins, technology 
firms including Google, IBM and Microsoft are 
supporting the Bush administration's efforts to 
maintain the United States' unique influence over 
domain names.

In what amounted to a public effort to back the 
status quo, those firms sent representatives to 
an event here organized to highlight what some 
participants touted as the security and stability 
of the current form of Internet governance. MCI, 
BellSouth and Cisco Systems also participated.

Because it's home to 200 million Internet users 
and nearly half of the world's electronic 
commerce, the United States is in a unique 
position to ensure there's not a slowdown in Net 
growth, Michael D. Gallagher, the U.S. Commerce 
Department's assistant secretary for 
communications and information, said at the 
event. The gathering was organized by the 
Information Technology Association of America.

"The U.S. does not support top-down 
intergovernmental control of the Internet," 
Gallagher said at a panel discussion composed of 
technology industry and government 
representatives. "We do not believe in adding an 
inter-governmental layer of bureaucracy over such 
a dynamic medium as the Internet."

The United Nations and one of its agencies, the 
International Telecommunication Union, have 
scheduled the World Summit on the Information 
Society (WSIS) in Tunisia for Nov. 16 to 18. It's 
designed in part to provide other nations with a 
forum to debate alternatives to the current form 
of Internet governance, which is heavily 
influenced by the Internet Corporation for 
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)--a California 
nonprofit created by the Clinton 
administration--and the Commerce Department.

Business groups have long expressed worry that 
greater U.N. control could usher in higher taxes, 
curbs on free speech and reams of new 
regulations. "That is one of our biggest 
concerns, that politics that have nothing to do 
with ICANN start trickling into how the Internet 
is going to be run," said Rick Lane, vice 
president for government affairs at News Corp.

"It is because the U.S. government has had the 
lighest possible touch on the Internet...that we 
support the idea that we do not need another 
international body," said Harris Miller, 
president of ITAA.
A global spat
Nearly all the components of Internet governance 
already are distributed by geographic region. 
Internet addresses are assigned by regional 
organizations including ones in Europe, Asia and 
Latin America, and national governments currently 
control country code domains (such as .jp for 
Japan).

"The real work of domain name system happens in a 
very distributed, very decentralized way," said 
Andrew McLaughlin, Google's senior policy counsel 
and a former ICANN official. "The best way to 
keep that vector of development growing is to 
keep this a loosely, lightly coordinated system." 
If the U.S. government wanted to pull the plug on 
google.co.uk, it could not, McLaughlin said.

But ICANN does approve new top-level domains and 
it does wield some influence over the Internet's 
root severs. Because the organization is located 
in California, some nations perceive it as having 
an uncomfortably close relationship to the U.S. 
federal government. As a result, nations such as 
Russia, Brazil and Iran have published statements 
saying that no "single government" should have a 
"pre-eminent role" in terms of Internet 
governance. The European Union said in September 
that it's "very firm" on Internet governance 
reform.

Gallagher, from the U.S. Commerce Department, 
said that foreign governments' concern over the 
American-dominated Net governance system was 
misplaced.

"It's clear that they don't understand how the 
DNS is structured, how it works," he said, 
talking about the Domain Name System. "For those 
of you that are looking for the holy grail, for 
the meaning of life, for the fountain of youth, 
it does not lie in the DNS...where you need to 
look is inside yourselves and the policies you 
establish and the environments you create for 
your citizens."

Any multigovernmental body--based at the United 
Nations or anywhere else--would undermine the 
current model that is based around the private 
sector, one State Department official said.

"We are going to WSIS arguing for a system that 
is very light-handed, that is minimalist but 
essential for stability and security," said 
Richard Beaird, the department's senior deputy 
U.S. coordinator for international communications 
and information policy. "Others, including the 
European Union, would like to replace that with 
an intergovernmental council. We do not think 
that is the right way to go."

-- 
Lisa McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Mass Communication & Women's Studies
Editor, Feminist Media Studies
Director of Graduate Studies, M.A. Program in Mass Communication
Union for Democratic Communications Representative,
World Summit on the Information Society

Mass Communication
Williams Hall
Miami University-Ohio
Oxford, OH 45056
USA
Tele: 513-529-3547
Fax: 513-529-1835