U.N. Internet Confab Takes On ICANN, Or Does It Really?

Telecom Policy Report, Nov 6, 2006

The United Nations this past week held a conference in Athens, Greece, with a lofty mission of addressing global Internet governance. But the fundamental backslide of the international body is whether it can take away any power or functions from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), responsible for controlling network addresses on the Internet.

Amid platitudes on multi-lingualism, multi-culturalism and the Internet's role in preserving or promoting global democracy (TelecomWeb news break, Oct. 30), this first meeting of the U.N.'s Internet Governance Forum (IGF) - with a reported 1,200 delegates from 90 nations and myriad organizations in attendance - seemingly already knew it would be a long and strenuous process to possibly wrest Internet control of any sort from the United States.

The four-day session's airing of national complaints about U.S. policy surround the World Wide Web's use of only the Latin alphabet for Internet names has been drawing controversy for some time. The U.N.'s formation of a Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) drew flak in early and mid-2005 as being virtually unnecessary in an already crowded field of organizations looking at the Web's complexities and activities.

The Administration, Congress, and numerous American companies and associations have been adamant about the retaining the reins, in part because U.S. tax money essentially invested in and nurtured the whole concept. In addition, anti-U.S. positions and/or anti-American sentiment would manifest itself in a detrimental manner via U.S. Internet governance. Within the United States itself, there have been debates about adequate governing and controlling ICANN in the first place, but the U.N. threat is seen as undercutting U.S. economic advantages attributable to Internet-intensive innovation, invention and electronic commerce (hence competitiveness).

Renewal Causes Angst

ICANN's authority stems from contractual authority from the U.S. Department of Commerce, and what U.N. critics thought might be an open door to change was closed in late September when the Commerce renewed and extended its ICANN oversight with some changes in the activity's operation for another three years. This set off a round of criticism, primarily from outside of the United States, about Commerce treating ICANN with an even lighter touch going forward, despite ICANN pledging to be less heavy-handed in its dealings with the outside world (meaning both domestically and internationally).

A key U.S. figure making an appearance at the U.N. session was ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf, Google's vice president and "chief Internet evangelist" who is heralded as "the father of the Internet" and co-inventor of TCP/IP. Behind the scenes, however, ICANN's main power brokers and decisions makers are believed to be Dr. Paul Twomey, ICANN's president and CEO, and to a somewhat lesser extent Commerce's acting Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information who usually also is responsible for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). John M. R. Kneuer continues to wait for his confirmation by the U.S. Senate (TelecomWeb news break, Sept. 12).

Cerf's pitch touched on the difficulties of creating a system in which non-Latin scripts are used (new demands center on adding Arabic, Cyrillic and Chinese ideograms). According to Cerf, while research into a multi-lingual Internet is ongoing, it's a "huge technical challenge." He warned of the Internet breaking up into non-interoperable components, each using a different language to identify Web sites.

One of the big proponents of a multi-lingual Internet has been the European Commission (EC), which has been prodding the United States for eight years to give up control of Internet governance. But the EC also admits it doesn't expect any concrete actions to emerge from this past week's meeting. "Although no negotiated outcomes are planned, dynamic coalitions among stakeholders can emerge," the EC said in an official opening statement.

On the surface, IGF speeches, panels and workshops continued along the lines of public diplomacy - stressing cooperation, prosperity, freedom of expression and such - but there was an underlying theme (and some say reflecting the deeper dispute) about fragmented global use of the Internet and international governance. There is little doubt about the negative implications among U.S. lawmakers and policy makers, however.

Forget About It

There is near unanimous bipartisan support for the U.S. retention in the House and Senate. U.S. politicians are equally miffed that many European Union member states believe U.N. governance of the Internet isn't a bad idea.

"No one wants here wants to see the U.N. in the process," says Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) a member of the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce and chairman of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. "We all oppose any U.N. take over of the ICANN responsibility," adds Cliff Sterns (R-Fla.), committee member and chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection.