[WSIS CS-Plenary] Internet gouvernance and Tuns Summit

[Jean-Louis FULLSACK]

Bonjour 
Please find hereafter an opinion on IG and WSIS in Tunis, published by TelecomTV News (which will be present in Tunis)
Best
Jean-Louis Fullsack
Internet
War of words on Internet governance, just one week ahead of WSIS 
by Grahame Lynch - 9/11/2005 14:57:32

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With just seven days to go until the World Summit on the Information Society, a war of words has broken out over the future of Internet governance - an issue that will feature prominently at the Tunis-hosted event. Two spokesmen from the opposite sides of the debate used American newspaper columns to up the ante on the issue.

In the Wall Street Journal, Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman has accused the United Nations and developing countries of posing a "grave threat" to the Internet by trying to usurp its governance from largely technically-focused groups such as ICANN.

Meanwhile, United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan argued in the Washington Post that the UN's intentions are benign and that it has no intention to take control of technical governance functions but at the same time warned it would be "naive" to deny governments their legitimate policy interest in the Internet. 

Coleman, a long standing critic of the UN and the sponsor of a Congress resolution backing US control of the core Internet root system, accuses the UN and the International Telecommunications Union of stage-managing the Tunisia event under the cover of digital divide issues in order to take control of the Internet. 

"Their cover story: devising a blueprint to help the developing world more fully participate in the digital revolution. Their real mission: strategizing to take over management of the Internet from the US and enable the United Nations to dominate and politicize the World Wide Web," he wrote.

He said the low point of the WSIS preparatory process was the European Union's "shameful endorsement" of a plan favoured by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Cuba that would terminate the US role in Internet oversight, relegate both private enterprise and non-governmental organizations to the sidelines, and place a UN-dominated group in charge of the Internet's operation and future. 

"The EU's declaration was a 'political coup' according to London's Guardian newspaper, which predicted that once the world's governments awarded themselves control of the Internet, the US would be able to do little but acquiesce," Coleman wrote. "Such acquiescence would amount to appeasement. We cannot allow Tunis to become a digital Munich."

But the UN's Annan says the criticisms of those such as Coleman are overblown and that there is no intention for the UN to assume direct control of the Internet - merely to give developing countries a greater role in its decision-making processes.

"The need for change is a reflection of the future, when Internet growth will be most dramatic in developing countries,” said Annan. “What we are seeing is the beginning of a dialogue between two different cultures: the nongovernmental Internet community, with its traditions of informal, bottom-up decision making, and the more formal, structured world of governments and intergovernmental organizations." 

"The Internet has become so important for almost every country's economy and administration that it would be naive to expect governments not to take an interest, especially since public service applications in areas such as education and health care will become even more widespread," he added.

Meanwhile, the US Internet commentator and law professor Lawrence Lessig has weighed in on the issue, suggesting that Europe's opposition to the present governance arrangements has more to do with politics than policy. 

In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine, Lessig said "The largest cause of this rift is European distrust of the United States. It's not particularly related to the Internet. The Europeans are eager to stand up to the Americans, and that I think has been produced by the last five years of US foreign policy. It's not really a cyberlaw problem."

Lessig said he's been a critic of ICANN for a long time, especially in its early stages. "But I think what it's trying to do now is pretty close to what it ought to be doing, which is just trying to serve technical functions in the narrowest possible way. They've resisted a lot of policy work that they could have been doing."

"Right now, I hope that ICANN continues to exercise control,” he added. “It's not because I have any affection for the US government's control over ICANN, but because I think that they've developed an internal norm about making as light a regulatory footprint as they can. I would be worried about transferring authority because I think that some other body coming in might imagine it can use its power over the domain names to try to regulate all sorts of policy objectives. We'd all be worse off if that happened."

TelecomTV will be reporting from WSIS in Tunis all next week, and will produce a special edition of our NewsDesk video programme on the final Friday.
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