[WSIS CS-Plenary] How the Media is seeing things

[Gurstein, Michael]

>From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Text on Internet governance watered down

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TUNIS, Tunisia -- Negotiators seeking to avert a U.S.-EU showdown at
this week's U.N. summit on the information society watered down language
on the Internet's governance in talks Tuesday.

U.S. officials considered the vague language a signal that world leaders
would ultimately agree to leaving the U.S. Commerce Department
ultimately in charge of the Internet's addressing system.

"We're waiting until they pass something we can accept," said U.S.
Assistant Secretary of Commerce Michael Gallagher.

Diplomats are eager to reach agreement before Wednesday's start of the
World Summit on the Information Society, which is scheduled to last
through Friday.

The summit 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 around 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.



That job is handled by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers, or ICANN, a quasi-independent group that ultimately answers to
the U.S. government.

Since the latest round of talks began Sunday, the specific wording of
the summit's draft declaration has evolved from "international
management of the Internet," written by Pakistan, to far less specific
language.

"We're two-thirds of our way to a good compromise," EU spokesman Martin
Selmayr said.

The EU has been mediating between the United States and a group of
countries including China and Iran that have sought to replace ICANN
with a multi-country group under U.N. auspices.

Washington set a course for confrontation when it declared in June that
it will retain such oversight indefinitely, despite what many countries
thought was a longstanding 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.

Already, rights watchdogs say, both Tunisian and foreign reporters on
hand for the summit have been harassed and beaten. Reporters Without
Borders says its secretary-general, Robert Menard, has been banned from
attending.

Civil groups also accused the government Tuesday of blocking access
within Tunisia to a Web site devoted to a citizens' summit held in
conjunction with the main U.N. event.