[Upd-discuss] Analysis: Pay-per-Information & Plundering Societies: The US monopoly of Internet to be challenged

[Zapopan Martin Muela-Meza]

European Union says internet could fall apart
Richard Wray
Wednesday October 12, 2005
The Guardian
http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,1590244,00.html
(access free but must register first)

· Developing countries demand share of control
· US says urge to censor underlies calls for reform

A battle has erupted over who governs the internet, with America demanding
to maintain a key role in the network it helped create and other countries
demanding more control.

The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a
meeting in Tunisia next month the internet will split apart.

At issue is the role of the US government in overseeing the internet's
address structure, called the domain name system (DNS), which enables
communication between the world's computers. It is managed by the
California-based, not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (Icann) under contract to the US department of commerce.

A meeting of officials in Geneva last month was meant to formulate a way
of sharing internet governance which politicians could unveil at the
UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis on November
16-18. A European Union plan that goes a long way to meeting the demands
of developing countries to make the governance more open collapsed in the
face of US opposition.

Viviane Reding, European IT commissioner, says that if a multilateral
approach cannot be agreed, countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and
some Arab states could start operating their own versions of the internet
and the ubiquity that has made it such a success will disappear.

"We have to have a platform where leaders of the world can express their
thoughts about the internet," she said. "If they have the impression that
the internet is dominated by one nation and it does not belong to all the
nations then the result could be that the internet falls apart."

The US argues that many of the states demanding a more open internet are
no fans of freedom of expression.

Michael Gallagher, President Bush's internet adviser and head of the
national telecommunications and information administration, believes they
are seizing on the only "central" part of the system in an effort to exert
control. "They are looking for a handle, thinking that the DNS is the
meaning of life. But the meaning of life lies within their own borders and
the policies that they create there."

The US government, which funded the development of the internet in the
60s, said in June it intended to retain its role overseeing Icann,
reneging on a pledge made during Bill Clinton's presidency. Since Icann
was created, the US commerce department has not once interfered with its
decisions.

David Gross, who headed the US delegation at the Geneva talks, said
untested models of internet governance could disrupt the 250,000-plus
networks, all using the same technical standards (TCP/IP), which allows
over a billion people to get online for 27bn daily user sessions.

"The internet has been a remarkably reliable and stable network of
networks and it has grown at a rate unprecedented in human history," he
said. "What we are looking for is a continued evolution of the internet
that is technically driven. We do not think the creation of new or use of
existing multilateral institutions in the governance of essentially
technical institutions is a way to promote technological change."

'Valuable dot'

According to Emily Taylor, director of legal and policy issues at Nominet,
which oversees the address categories such as .co or .org - root zone
files known as top-level domain names - bearing Britain's .uk suffix, the
spat in Geneva was "all about the root - the valuable dot at the end of
domain names".

At present Icann decides what new top-level domain names to create and who
should run the existing domains, in consultation with a panel called the
Governmental Advisory Committee. In practice the GAC exerts more pressure
on Icann than the US department of commerce ever has. It was at the GAC's
urging that a recent request to create more top-level domain names was
reviewed. The commerce department does have the power to clear Icann's
decisions.

Icann's president, Paul Twomey, shares many of the US government concerns.
He is adamant that his organisation should be allowed to evolve rather
than be brushed aside in favour of some untried model of state-led
internet governance.

"We are firmly committed to a multi-stakeholder approach," he said. "We
expect to evolve, we expect to keep changing. We are concerned about
stability [of the internet] and we think it's best to evolve existing
institutions. Our present corporate structure is a matter of history, not
of any particular design."

But designing new structures is exactly what the international community
seems intent on doing. At one end of the spectrum are Iran, Pakistan and
other so-called control-oriented states that want to create a new
governing council for the web to which Icann would be accountable. The
remit of this council seems broad enough to include questions of content,
a worry for advocates of free speech on the web.

Two week's ago the EU proposed its own structure, which consists of what
it calls a "cooperation model" to deal with Icann and a forum which would
allow governments, interested organisations and industry to discuss
internet issues and swap best practice.

'Lightweight'

"What we are talking about is a governance structure that is extremely
lightweight, where the government oversight of internet functions is
limited just to the list of essential tasks," said one EU negotiator.

While the forum "does not decide anything, it is a place where people can
come to a view and generally participate in thinking about the internet
and the way it is governed".

The EU plan was applauded by states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, leading
the former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt to express misgivings on his
weblog: "It seems as if the European position has been hijacked by
officials that have been driven by interests that should not be ours.

"We really can't have a Europe that is applauded by China and Iran and
Saudi Arabia on the future governance of the internet. Even those critical
of the United States must see where such a position risks taking us."

But EU negotiators are adamant that they reject calls for state control of
the content of the internet. "None of this is about content and that is a
big difference between the EU position and the position of China and
Brazil," the negotiator said. "The proposals that came from Brazil and the
others to amend our own proposal were not acceptable, they were trying to
drag us closer to their position. We are very alive to that."

Calls from Argentina for a continuing debate while Icann is restructured
are believed to have garnered support from countries such as Canada which
do not like the perceived power that the US has over the internet but are
wary of opening up the web to overall state control.

Just before the meeting in Tunis, there will be a three-day gathering of
bureaucrats to try to thrash out a deal on internet governance. Getting
the parties - especially the US - to agree to anything looks like a near
impossible task but Mrs Reding believes it is crucial to find common
ground or see the global communication network disintegrate.

The firm US stand makes that prospect of an end to ubiquity seem imminent.
Although any decision from the Tunis summit would have no legal standing,
the current deal between Icann and the US government is due to come to an
end in September next year, by which time the organisation is supposed to
be made independent under the deal made during the Clinton presidency.

Mr Gallagher said that after the Tunis meeting there will be further
discussion with governments and the private sector about the future of the
organisation. "But we are not going to bureaucratise, politicise and
retard the management of the DNS. Period," he said. "That will not happen.
We will not agree to it in November and we will not do it in September
2006."

Footnotes

Domain Name System

The DNS is the address book of the internet, matching numeric IP addresses
to alphabetic addresses such as www.amazon.co.uk, which people find easier
to remember. But instead of one central list of everyone's internet
address, which would be massive, it splits addresses into their
constituent parts - called domains - and gives each machine in the network
enough information to know where to locate the next machine down the line.
This is known as a distributed database.

Icann

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a
not-for-profit organisation that manages the DNS. It decides who gets to
operate the most basic domains, the top-level domains such as .com and
.org as well as all the world's country codes. It is responsible for
allocating space on the internet. It was set up in California under
contract to the department of commerce and as such it is subject to
California state law and any disagreements have to be taken up with that
state's courts.

TCP and IP

Internet Protocol (IP) is the technology that allows data to cross
networks, using a destination address (IP address) to make sure it reaches
the right place. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), meanwhile, ensures
the correct delivery of that data or its re-transmission if it gets lost.
Together they are the tarmac of the information superhighway.

Root zone file

Although the DNS is a distributed database it needs a starting point, a
list of where to go for the first part of an internet address and start a
search for a particular machine. This list of where to start is called the
root zone file. It is a list of 248 country code top-level domains
(ccTLDs) - such as .uk and .fr - as well as 14 generic top-level domains
(gTLDs), which are subject-based such as .com and .net and .org. The list,
held on 13 machines across the world, says who runs these domains and
where to find them.

Zapopan Muela
----------------------------- v -------------------------------
"Tiranos y autócratas han entendido siempre que el alfabetismo, 
el conocimiento, los libros y los periódicos son un peligro 
en potencia. Pueden inculcar ideas independientes e incluso
de rebeldía en las cabezas de sus súbditos.
----------------------------- v -------------------------------
"Tyrants and autocrats have always understood that literacy, 
learning, books and newspapers are potentially dangerous. 
They can put independent and even rebelious ideas to the heads 
of their subjects."
----------------------------- v -------------------------------
-- Sagan, Carl (1997). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle
in the Dark : El mundo y sus demonios: La ciencia como una luz en la 
oscuridad. México: Planeta, p. 390; New York: Ballantine Books, p. 362.


	
		
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