[Ecommerce] Economist: Gulliver's travails; Internet geopolitics

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

The Economist
October 8, 2005 U.S. Edition
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 714 words

Gulliver's travails; Internet geopolitics

Geneva
The battle to control the internet

SINCE the internet was created in the 1960s as a military-research
project, America has co-ordinated the underlying infrastructure. But
other countries are increasingly concerned that a single nation enjoys
such power, and want to place the internet in the hands of an
inter-governmental organisation-something America says might hobble the
network.

At a diplomatic conference last month in Geneva to prepare for the
United Nations World Summit on the Information Society, taking place in
November, vocal critics such as Brazil, China and Iran led the
opposition to America's control. On September 28th, the European Union
abandoned its support for the current system and proposed a new,
governmental approach, leaving America more isolated than ever.

Although the internet is largely decentralised and so difficult to
regulate, the domain-name system is one of the few levers by which it
can be controlled. Today, the internet is managed by a private-sector
group called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN), which America helped to set up in 1998 and still oversees.
ICANN alreadyhas an international board of directors and a governmental
advisory committee, but many non-Americans want to strengthen the role
of governments.

The EU proposal, announced by Britain, which currently holds the EU's
rotating presidency, was intended as a compromise between the UN
supporters and America. It would create a new organisation to set
policies over distributing routing numbers, creating new domains and the
like. Because of its role as chair, Britain, usually America's closest
ally on internet issues, had to stay neutral and could not beat back
calls by Denmark, France, Spain and the Netherlands for greater
government influence over the internet. After the announcement,
Brazilian and Iranian delegates rushed to congratulate British
officials, whose faces dropped when they realised the EU policy was
being lauded by America's loudest opponents.

If ICANN already has a degree of government representation, why is a new
organisation needed? Many of the arguments advanced come down to
suspicion of America, and fear that ICANN is a tool of American
hegemony. But another reason is that, although today the internet's
address system identifies digital devices, in future it may be extended
to encompass objects (through melding addresses with radio-frequency
identification tags), location (via global-positioning satellites) and
even individuals.

Meanwhile, countries demand sovereignty over their two-letter national
address suffixes, which due to a quirk of history still ultimately
reside under American control. Such concerns-which are political as much
as technical-call for greater government involvement, or so the argument
goes. All governments calling for change repeat the mantra that the new
system would be a "multi-stakeholder" process that includes industry and
civil-society groups.

However, the disingenuousness of the position was made clear during the
meeting last month in Geneva. Some countries demanded that groups
representing business and public-interest causes be thrown out of the
room when governments drafted documents for the summit in November. In
one instance, delegates from China and Brazil actually pounded on tables
to drown out a speaker from industry.

To break the impasse, some countries are trying to devise a compromise
before the summit that will temporarily appease all sides. America has
endorsed a proposal that would create a forum-devoid of formal powers-to
discuss these matters. This will enable the issue to remain on the
diplomatic radar after the UN summit. Indeed, the real battle will come
in 2006 when America's contract with ICANN comes up for renewal and
there is a big conference of the International Telecommunication Union,
a UN body that aspires to fill ICANN's shoes.

Ultimately, the political squabbles are overshadowing more important
things that could improve the lot of internet users, such as widening
access to the internet and using technology for development. The good
news from the UN meetings is that governments increasingly understand
the importance of technology to society. The bad news is that the
internet risks becoming suffocated in their embrace.