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COMMUNICATION: Everyone Wants to Govern the Internet
By Diana Cariboni
Dec 11, MONTEVIDEO (IPS) - When typing in a web address (like
www.ipsnews.net) or sending an e-mail, most people probably don't give much
thought to how Internet domain names are assigned.
Domain names are unique identifiers that establish geographic (like .ar
for Argentina), or other references (such as .com for commercial activities,
.org for non-profit organisations, or .gov for government bodies).
Today, heated debate surrounds the following question: With so many
economic and political interests involved in the Internet, what is the best
way to guarantee that addresses are assigned fairly?
The web was originally governed by the United States, where it first
emerged in late 1969 out of a military security project known as ARPANET.
Military questions remained confined to other networks, and ARPANET was
incorporated into the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). The
basic principle was data transmission between distant computers, via
telephone lines.
By 1990, the NSFNET had 100,000 servers. The first web page was created
in Europe, and the first web browser, Mosaic, emerged in 1993.
By then, the web was no longer an exclusively U.S. phenomenon. At the
start, standards were set by small groups of people, and even by single
individuals, who formed part of an open Internet culture, in which decisions
were reached by consensus. Companies and governments were not yet paying
much attention to the Internet.
But as the net grew, larger organisations took over much of the work,
although those originally involved tried to keep alive the principles of
openness and consensus-based decision-making, as well as the vision of the
web as a place for open and free information exchange.
However, corporate organisations had an enormous presence on the
Internet, and wanted to be involved in governance of the web.
''We were successful in getting the word out on how great the Internet
was,'' Alejandro Pisanty, a Mexican expert who sits on the board of
directors of the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN), told IPS.
''It was only natural that it would grow. We academics and
non-governmental organisations weren't going to be able to remain on our own
in cyberspace for long.''
There are three main bodies that set standards for the World Wide Web.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a large open international
community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers
concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the web's
smooth operation. It sets basic technical standards, and anyone can
participate in its working groups, through e-mail.
But ''In recent times the IETF has been coming under increasing pressure
from commercial organisations complaining that its policy of reaching wide
consensus makes it too slow,'' says a report by the Association for
Progressive Communications (APC).
The pressure has also come ''from governments and law enforcement
agencies wanting to impose legal obligations on it to incorporate such
things as wiretapping facilities and traceability of users into its
standards,'' the APC adds.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) sets standards for the Internet in
areas like accessibility, user interface, and architecture. Participation is
restricted to member organisations that pay annual fees.
The third major standard-setting body is ICANN, a global non-profit
corporation set up to oversee a range of Internet technical management
functions currently handled by the U.S. government, or by its contractors
and volunteers.
ICANN, which manages the Domain Name System (DNS), is made up of
representatives of business, universities, and civil society, as well as
technical experts.
It emerged in 1998 out of a U.S. Department of Commerce initiative to
transfer responsibility for functions involving the technical management of
the Internet from the U.S. government and its contractors to a
private-sector, globally representative, non-profit, consensus-based
organisation.
The transition was to last eight years, until 2006.
One of the first things ICANN did was to push Network Solutions, Inc.
(NSI), the dominant registrar of domain names, to allow more competition.
For years, the U.S. firm had enjoyed a monopoly granted by Washington.
Competition was originally opened up to five new companies - America
Online, CORE, France Telecom, Melbourne IT, and register.com - and 52 other
companies have qualified for ICANN accreditation.
ICANN also instituted mandatory arbitration of trademark claims, which
has been criticised by trademark holders and civil society groups. In 2001,
it approved seven new top-level domains (TLDs), including .info and .biz,
but rejected 35 others, which drew complaints from the losing applicants.
The latest problem arose in September, when Verisign, which operates the
.com and .net databases, launched a service that redirected users who
mistyped a .com or .net address to its own search engine, on which it sold
advertising.
That fooled certain filters designed to weed out Internet junk, or
''spam'', into assuming that some junk e-mail was genuine, and triggered a
number of problems. ICANN threatened to sue, and VeriSign suspended the
service.
Consensus-based decision-making is not easy when the members of a group
represent conflicting interests. But according to ICANNwatch.org, the
problem with the domains system is its lack of accountability.
''In addition to avoiding governmental accountability mechanisms, ICANN
lacks much of the accountability normally found in corporations and in
non-profits,'' such as competition and shareholder monitoring, says the
watchdog group.
Over the past year, ICANN has come under fire in the preparatory meetings
for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), taking place this
week in Geneva.
The governments of countries like China, Brazil and South Africa complain
that ICANN maintains contractual relationships with the U.S. government;
that the United States has excessive influence in the organisation; that it
does its business overwhelmingly in English; and that the developing South
is not adequately represented on its administrative bodies.
They called for the Internet to be governed by a United Nations agency,
or for an inter-governmental institution to be set up for that purpose. But
the United States and European Union are opposed to the idea.
In meetings in Geneva last Saturday, the governments taking part in the
WSIS agreed to include in the conference's final draft declaration several
paragraphs on the need for participation by companies, scientific
researchers, civil society and governments.
They stated that ''policy authority for Internet-related public policy
issues is the sovereign right of States,'' which also have ''rights and
responsibilities for international Internet-related public policy issues''.
The WSIS plan of action asks the U.N. secretary-general to set up a
''working group on Internet governance...to investigate and make proposals
for action'' by 2005, when the second phase of the WSIS will be held in
Tunisia.
''Governance of the Internet is a broad issue that encompasses questions
like spam, cybernetic crimes, taxes, privacy issues, and much more,'' said
Pisanty.
But ''the issue has now been reduced to the coordination of domain name
systems and Internet Protocol address space allocation,'' which ''is already
being handled effectively,'' he complained.
According to Pisanty, ''academic and social organisations from the South
participate heavily,'' even ''beyond the minimum levels set by ICANN to
guarantee geographic diversity.''
In addition, ''governments of countries from the South'' have been
steadily incorporated into ICANN's governing committee, he added.
Other actors within the Internet community are reluctant to accept the
idea of setting up a new inter-governmental body.
The history of the Internet ''is based on a self-managing model'' that is
''very difficult to adapt to an inter-governmental body,'' and that model
''has been very successful, because we have been able to exercise influence
over it,'' the executive director of the Latin American and Caribbean IP
Address Registry (LACNIC), Raúl Echeberría, commented to IPS.
LACNIC is the non-profit organisation that took over responsibility for
managing the region's own Internet addresses, with the formal establishment
of a regional Internet registry. There are similar organisations in Asia,
Europe and North America, each of which has representatives in ICANN.
''The transition process of transferring many functions to ICANN is to be
completed by 2006, and there is no turning back in the process of separation
from Washington,'' said Echeberría.
In his view, one of the fundamental changes in the next two years will be
the relocation of the 13 strategic root servers - the special network that
enables computers connected to the Internet to find each other - most of
which are now concentrated in the United States.
(END/2003)
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