The UN's World Summit on the Information Society began with a
high-minded purpose: to bridge the technological gap between richer and poorer nations. But now the WSIS event, which begins on 16 November in Tunisia, has transformed into a week-long debate about who should control key portions of the Internet.Delegates from nations like Iran, China, and Cuba have been clear in what they want: less control by the US government. Instead, they've suggested creation of some sort of cyber-bureaucracy — perhaps under the UN International Telecommunication Union.
Those arguments have met with a cold shoulder in Washington. The Bush administration said in no uncertain terms in June that it intended to relinquish the US' unique influence over domain names and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that position. But that doesn't advocate relinquishing total control or creation of a UN bureaucracy.
Declan McCullagh, the chief political correspondent of ZDNet UK's sister site, CNET News, will be reporting direct from the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia beginning next week.
If the UN prevails in this international political spat, business groups worry that domain name fees would go up and regulations would increase. If no agreement is reached, there's always the possibility of a bifurcated Internet divided by geographical region.
CNET News.com recently spoke with Ambassador of Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs David Gross, who's leading the US delegation to Tunisia. Gross previously was a telecommunications lawyer and a lobbyist for AirTouch Communications (now part of Vodafone).
Q: What are the stakes at the WSIS summit?
A: The stakes are really very high. The focus of the summit
originally — and we believe still — is on the use of technology to take
advantage of the historic opportunity to better everyone around the
world, economically, socially and politically. Those are very high
stakes.
How much of the current opposition over this issue is a result of
global tensions regarding the US as the world's lone superpower and
involvement in Iraq?
This is an issue that I think should be and will be addressed on its
merits. The Internet has been an extraordinary development in the
history of the world. There are about a billion people connected to the
Internet in a remarkably short period of time.
The system has worked extraordinarily well and arguably better than any other technology that's ever been rolled out. We seek to ensure that that continued advancement goes forward. I know by the way that the president just this afternoon (Thursday) is awarding the Medal of Freedom to a host of extraordinary Americans. Two of those Americans include Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, who are often referred to as the fathers of the Internet.
Does the US government have too much control of Internet governance?
If you look at it the way most people would, it's a very bottom-up
approach. There are a lot of players — civil society and the private
sector — that play an important role. Certainly, the US government...
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Talkback
As said before, no single enitity should have (mostly) control of globally important systems or services. Should it come to a showdown of force then it would be better to endure one big pain then a lot of small ones. The goal should be to decentralize and make diverse (as in how many who's control what) anything that (might) have a global impact.
America INVENTED the internet.
American taxpayers PAID for the research that went into inventing the internet through DARPA.
American know how and ingenuity created the internet.
If you Europeans think we are going to hand over the control of the internet to a bunch of medieval mullahs from Iran, who delight in chopping off people's heads, hands and fingers, and stone women to death, you are indeed very sadly mistaken!
Not gonna happen.
Dear Smithy, I'm sorry you feel so much aggression against the rest of the world. Just to mention: I also don't approve the censorship of some countries, but that aside.
Think of the following situation: the US gets total control over the internet. Other nations won't be happy with that and come up with a newer, and likely better/faster/more secure internet. Aren't you scared that the US then could becomes isolated from that information source? Maybe the US will see a reduction in trade which isn't good for anyone.
I, for one, would not like it if that happened. And keep in mind that other countries also invested in gateways and other infrastructures (hardware of software wise).
Dilbert,
"Other nations won't be happy with that and come up with a newer, and likely better/faster/more secure internet. "
Yeah?
Why haven't they,then?
More to the point, if they could, why didn't they invent the internet themselves?
Most advances in internet technology today, still come from the US.
After all we own Cisco AND Juniper,the biggest makers of internet routers on the planet.
Dilbert :"Aren't you scared that the US then could becomes isolated from that information source?"
Most of the world's top internet portal, top internet businesses and sources of information are American, like Yahoo, Msn, Microsoft.com, Amazon, Ebay, Google, etc etc..
It's not America you gotta worry about getting cut off from from information sources, its the rest of the world you gotta worry about them losing access to the best business and sources on the internet.
Smithy, It's like saying:" Well, the Wright brothers flew for the first time (powered flight) so only the US may build aiplanes."
That makes no sense. All over the world inventions are made and, although the inventor should be getting paid for it, I think it would be hard to say to the others that they cannot use it or determine how to use it.
""Other nations won't be happy with that and come up with a newer, and likely better/faster/more secure internet. "
Yeah?
Why haven't they,then? "
Because they invested in the infrastructure of this internet and it will take a lot of money to change this infrastructure. One can already see where this could go, Europe is making its version of GPS called Galileo, and China has its own cheap road navigation system so there IS a shift going on. Countries like to be independent, that goes for the US as well as the rest of the world.
You wrote: "Most of the world's top internet portal, top internet businesses and sources of information are American, like Yahoo, Msn, Microsoft.com, Amazon, Ebay, Google, etc etc.."
Correct. But, there is another factor called export and China and Europe, for instance, are big markets. Information about products, shipment and even money transfers are sent across the Internet. If the US would not be able to track their orders or to promote their products to the rest of the world they would become isolated. That's what I tried to make clear.
Berners-Lee is the one who started the internet... father of the internet - or however you want to call it. Is he an American? no. He is from Europe man - London. Studied in England. Are the google guys all American - nei. Sergey Brin is a Moscow guy. There are tons of examples I could give you, where Europeans, Indians, Russians, Chinese people (PentiumM was designed in Israel dude) do great stuff when it comes to the "whole IT business." I guess Smithy will never get the idea of the internet - it's about connecting the world man.
regards, thomas, switzerland
Well, if the stable democracies wanted to form a group to exclusely administer/provide oversite for ICANN, I would not have a kneejerk reaction against that thought. The idea of the corrupt Byzantine bureaucracy known as the UN having any involvement should make everyone shudder.
even though im not american, i must agree with smithy. america invented the internet, the rest of the world tapped in. they have no reason to hand over control. america isn't screwing with it, or sensoring anything. i dont see why they're complaining, its been fine so far. if the other countries fear the u.s. could cut them off in a conflict, well its their problem, its not their system to begin with.
Get a clue. Without European inventions the US wouldn't even exist. Next time you think about who should own what do think a couple of years more back.
"Get a clue. Without European inventions the US wouldn't even exist. Next time you think about who should own what do think a couple of years more back.".
Read what you wrote, then go slam the door on your head a couple of times.
You are clearly not a very logical person. The large amount of land which has been assigned the name "United States / United States of America" would still exist.
Why dont YOU get a clue?
Like as per usual our American friends believe the world fuctions around them. Oh dear!!! Instead of been more down to earth and admitting that the Internet and in particular the web was a multiple nations invention. (the w.w.w was created at CERN European Agency by an Englishman named Tim Berners-Lee). They go on about saying, we did this and we did that.
The truth is that you guy should be greatfull that Great Britain was the nation that colonised you and not the Spanish that left a mess in the rest of the American continent. Thanks to the U.K. you Americans and Canadians enjoy the standard of living you have.
But in the end it's not regular Americans fault that your government and media feeds you with all that rubbish about the land of freedom and the american dream, instead of telling you the truth about your place in History.
This is not to say you don't deserve been the largest economy in the world, just making you think that there is a lot of factor that put you there. Not that you guy are above regular humans.
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