The United Nations wants a big piece of the Internet.
At a summit at the UN this week, delegates from around the world gathered to take a preliminary step toward UN involvement in some of the areas that are bedevilling Internet users and governments alike, including spam, network security, privacy and the regulation of the technical underpinnings that control the sprawling global network.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan set the tone in a speech on Thursday, criticising the current system through which Internet standards are set and domain names are handled, a process currently dominated by the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. Such structures "must be made accessible and responsive to the needs of all the world's people," Annan said.
On Friday, the summit will hear recommendations from five different UN working groups on topics including everything from domain names to root server operation to free speech and intellectual property to privacy.
Although the UN process is still in its early stages, the result could dramatically reshape the way the Internet is run and put an end to some of the informal, collaborative processes that exist today. The master "root servers" that serve up addresses for country codes and all other top-level domains, for instance, are operated in part by volunteers instead of through a UN-style apparatus.
Dozens of delegates from developing nations echoed Annan's remarks throughout the rest of the day, arguing that their governments do not have a voice in the way the Internet is operated and that more money and investment from richer nations is the only way to end the so-called digital divide. Khalid Saeed, the secretary of Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology, said his country must "play an active role in all layers" of organisations that control the operation of the modern Internet.
Greater UN involvement is a direct threat to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which the Clinton administration created six years ago to oversee address allocation and top-level domains. While ICANN has attempted to be international in scope through diversity in board members and meeting locations, delegates have viewed the California-based not-for-profit organisation as too closely allied with the wealthier countries.
"There are many existing players in the Internet space," ICANN chair Vint Cerf said at the summit. "We should build on the foundation that they have created. Engineers have a saying, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'"
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Wouldn't running water, schools & hospitals be more useful than internet access to the developing world?