[Ecommerce] France: Internet summit likely to get nowhere

[Manon Ress]

France: Internet summit likely to get nowhere

http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5944688.html

The United States will not heed requests by the European Union and
other countries to accept a multinational approach to running the
Internet, a French government official said Thursday.

An international summit next week on how the Internet should be run
was likely to end in stalemate, the official said.

CNET News.com's chief political correspondent, Declan McCullagh, will
be reporting direct from the World Summit on the Information Society
in Tunisia beginning next week.

A U.N. report has put forward the multinational approach to running
the Internet, which serves a billion users worldwide, saying this
would be more democratic and transparent, a view the 25 nations of
the EU share.

But the United States believes an international body running the
Internet would slow the pace of innovation.

A final round of talks on the report starts Sunday to seek a global
agreement on Internet governance before the World Summit on the
Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia, on Nov. 16-18.

"It is possible that we only reach a consensus on the fact that
discussions need to be pursued," Jean-Michel Hubert, the French
government's representative to the WSIS summit, told reporters in
Paris in a presummit briefing.

Day-to-day handling of domain names is done by the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, a California-
based nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Commerce Department.

"We are looking to build a new model of private-public cooperation on
this existing structure," Hubert said.

"An agreement (in Tunis) on the principles (behind this model) would
already be a breakthrough. But we should not jeopardize the
efficiency of the system," Hubert said about talks in Tunis.

Hubert said participating countries needed to agree that a new
supervisory structure should not intervene in the day-to-day running
of ICANN.

Governance of the Internet has its roots in the way it was started 30
years ago as a research project funded by the U.S. Department of
Defense.

But since then the Internet has become a fundamental part of the
world's communications infrastructure, triggering a desire among many
governments to have a say in its running.

German industry said on Thursday that the Internet's current
governance should be left alone.

"We believe that a radical overhaul of the present Internet
governance architecture is not only unnecessary but also threatens
the stability and security of the Internet itself," Ludolf
Wartenberg, director general of the Federation of German Industries
said in a statement.

Bernhard Rohleder, director general of German technology federation
BITKOM said global accessibility of the Internet must not be threatened.

"It is essential to preserve private sector and technical community
leadership in the technical management of the Internet," Rohleder said.

A solution has to be found before the summer of 2006, when ICANN's
contract with the U.S. Dept of Commerce expires.

************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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