IP Democracy: Pivotal U.N. Summit on Internet Governance This Week

The fight over U.S. control of Internet governance could come to a head this week as the U.N. hosts its summit on the information age in Tunis. The long-simmering issue centers on who controls domain names, with European Union members and other nations asking the U.S. to relinquish control over naming — Icann, which governs names, is under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

According to this New York Times article, the U.S. is so far refusing to give up control, even though the agreement that lets Icann operate under the Commerce Department expires in September. While the U.S. tends to look intransigent in wanting to hold control over Internet governance, the government fears that turning over domain naming to international bodies such as the ITU (a proposal no longer on the table according to the Times piece) could politicize and balkanize the Internet.

But the U.S. may have to compromise, somehow, given the apparent hypocrisy of our position, namely that we are somehow objective where other nations or entities can’t be.

But Mr. Mueller [Milton Mueller, a partner in the Internet Project], a participant in the meeting and a longtime follower of developments at Icann, said the Americans had handled their position poorly in the face of global opposition since then. “Americans are so parochial when it comes to these things,” he said. “They have no idea how it sounds to 200 other countries when they say, ‘The Internet really is nongovernmental - except for us.’ Why were they so surprised? In the U.S., that contradiction becomes invisible to you.”

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on November 15, 2005 7:59 AM to IP Democracy