[iwar] Rift over global information control

Rift Over Global Info Control
Associated Press

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,61527,00.html

11:00 AM Dec. 09, 2003 PT

A U.N. summit aimed at ensuring global access to information technology
opens Wednesday in Geneva with rifts between industrialized and
developing countries threatening to overshadow the gathering's main
goals.

A key dispute is over who should rule the Internet. Some developing
countries, including China, South Africa, India and Brazil, want control
out of the hands of a private organization selected by the United States
and instead with an intergovernmental group, possibly under the United
Nations.

If countries do not believe their concerns are adequately heard by the
Internet's key decision-makers, a U.N. official warned, they may
unilaterally create conflicting national policies and even set up their
own networks within their borders.

"The medium itself can be fragmented," said Sarbuland Khan, coordinator
of the U.N. Task Force on Information and Communications Technologies.
That "can make it difficult for the Internet to remain a free and
interchangeable medium of exchange."

Given the extent of the disagreements, the world's leaders will likely
conclude this week's World Summit on the Information Society by
essentially ducking the issue and directing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan to convene a working group.

That group, to include government, business and civic leaders, then
would be directed to come up with a proposal for the second and final
phase of the summit, in Tunisia in 2005.

Yoshio Utsumi, secretary-general of the U.N. International
Telecommunications Union, said Tuesday his agency was well-positioned
and capable of taking charge, "but it's up to members to decide. At
this moment, there is no consensus."

On another issue before the gathering in Geneva, where the World Wide
Web was invented 13 years ago this month, the United States and other
industrialized countries have resisted Senegal's calls for a separate
pool of money to finance technology projects in poorer nations.

But delegates reached a compromise of sorts Tuesday: Countries that want
a fund can create one, while skeptics - including the United States,
Japan and the European Union - agreed to a study next year. No funding
commitments were immediately announced.

The discussions over funding and governance, along with media freedom,
have taken the spotlight away from the multitude of digital divide
projects being announced or showcased at the summit.

Around 16,000 people signed up to attend, including more than 50 world
leaders, mostly from developing countries. President Bush is staying
home, as is German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, despite previous
announcements that he would attend.

One person attending is Paul Twomey, chief executive of the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which the U.S. government
selected in 1998 to oversee the Internet's core addressing systems. His
group is the one under attack by some developing countries, and he even
found himself escorted out of a meeting room Friday where government
negotiators were discussing his organization's fate.

Although ICANN still answers to the U.S. Commerce Department, Twomey
said the organization has tried to represent global needs by opening
offices abroad and having board members from other countries. Twomey
himself is Australian.

But ICANN still is largely seen as an American body.

Hans Klein, chairman of Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility, said governments are legitimately worried that the U.S.
government can suddenly impose policies contrary to their interests.
For instance, Klein said, the United States might remove from central
databases the domain names for countries deemed sponsors of terrorism,
essentially kicking them offline.

Developing countries also have been frustrated that Western countries
that got on the Internet first gobbled up most of the available
addresses required for computers to connect, leaving developing nations
to share a limited supply.

And some countries want faster approval of domain names in non-English
characters - China even threatened a few years ago to split the Internet
in two and set up its own naming system for Chinese.

But ICANN does have support elsewhere. Tim Mertens, who runs a
consortium of European domain name operators, said an intergovernmental
alternative would only mean lengthy decision-making.

Twomey said many complaints stem from misconceptions. Some want a body
that also regulates spam and content, things beyond ICANN's authority.
Even on domain names, he said, some are frustrated that ICANN couldn't
legally reclaim ".com" names of geographic terms and royal families that
countries consider theirs.

Khan, the U.N. official, said many countries view ICANN as a relic of
an older Internet, one whose use was largely in the United States. The
Net's increasingly global nature, he said, calls for change.

-- This communication is confidential to the parties it is intended to serve --
Fred Cohen - http://all.net/ - fc@all.net - fc@unhca.com - tel/fax: 925-454-0171
Fred Cohen & Associates - University of New Haven - Security Posture

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Received on Wed Dec 10 06:39:10 2003