UN outlines future of US-less internet

[Professur]

UN outlines future of US-less internet
By Kieren McCarthy
Published Friday 15th July 2005 16:40 GMT
The United Nations has released its report into how it expects administration of the internet to work in future.

The report by the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) follows the outline given by those in charge of the process earlier this week at ICANN's tri-annual conference in Luxembourg. It provides four different models for future governance of the internet.

The merits of each model will be discussed at the Prep-Com3 conference in Geneva in September and finally end up at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in November, where the world's governments will make a final decision. None of the models allow the US government to retain overall control of the internet's foundation.

Model 1
A Global Internet Council (GIC), consisting of governments, closely tied to the UN, but with "involvement" of other stakeholders. This model is a complete overhaul of the existing system with both existing overseers ICANN and the US government relegated to supporting roles.

Model 2
An "enhanced role" for ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). ICANN would stay in its current role and even be significantly strengthened thanks to the general world consensus.

Model 3
An International Internet Council (IIC) to be set up that would take over the US government's role but not be an explicit part of the UN. Likely to make the GAC element of ICANN redundant and leave ICANN as a purely technical body.

Model 4
Three new bodies will be set up to deal with three arms of internet governance. The Global Internet Policy Council (GIPC) will be responsible for "internet-related public policy issues"; the World Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (WICANN) will look after technical issues and basically be the same as ICANN is now but with closer ties to the UN and taking over the US government's role; and the Global Internet Governance Forum (GIGF) will be a global talking shop to thrash out ideas.

The working group also provided a definition of internet governance as: “Internet governance is the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the internet.”

In effect, it split the role of running the internet down to four areas:

Infrastructure - meaning the domain name system and IP addresses
Internet issues such as spam, security and cybercrime
Intellectual property and international trade
Expansion, particularly in developing countries
The main problems to be dealt with at the moment, it said, were:

The cost of accessing the internet for developing countries
There was no agreed international way of dealing with spam
Not enough international ways of dealing with crime on the Internet
The Internet was being run by too few, elitist people without enough transparency
The organisation that will be most affected by the report's findings, ICANN, was upbeat about the report. Chairman Vint Cerf said ICANN had yet to come up with an official response but that there was "all kinds of mixed reaction" to the four models. The devil, as ever, would be in the details, he said.

ICANN's CEO Paul Twomey said he was pleased with how the report had ended up, referring to its constant references to "multi-stakeholder" decision-making. He quoted the UN special advisor on the whole issue, Nitin Desai as saying that 90 per cent of the benefit of such UN processs were in educating people about the situation.

"One gets a feeling from a first reading of this report that the effort that the internet community has made in trying to educate the working group on how the present technical co-ordination [of the internet] works has been quite fruitful," Twomey said. "It is certainly a very different tone to what we saw at the end of the first round of the world summit."

The big sticking point at the UN however will be the US government recent assertion of four new "principles" over the internet in which it said it would "maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file". This is widely seen as an early shot across the UN's boughs, since the WGIG report made it clear that in none of its models does the US get to keep its "historic role". A big bargaining chip that the US government is likely to use to sway the overall process in a direction it wants it to go.

Perhaps rather conveniently, all the staff at the US government body in charge of this controversial role, the NTIA, has gone on a two-day "off-site retreat" and won't be unavailable until Monday. Fancy that. ®

source

Lemme get this straight. The US defence department designed, developed, and built the damn thing. Let the rest of the world use it. And now, the world (the UN of all things) thinks it's theirs?

This should be better than the 4th of july.

 

[HomeLAN]

What else is new? Taking things from the US and then shitting on them is pretty much the sole purpose of the UN.

 

[MrBishop]

The internet today is a far cry from ARPAnet. The GVT gave up control of, manitenance of, building and expansion of it in 1989, when ARPAnet died. It's a commerial enterprise now controlled by the people who own the servers, write the programs and laid down the wiring etc...Enterprises who care for the cash and profits but not the policing of their product. It is also global in scale now. Why not control it through an international organisation.
I would've added in INTERPOL as well.

Whoever gets it..I wish them the best of luck!
It's tougher to grasp than a $2 hooker in a KY factory.

 

[Winky]

Y'know Bish always complains aboot people
not reading his posts all the way through.

The entry above is a prime reason
no one does...

"If" the 'inventors of the Internet' so chose
they could maintain control over it.

But sadly that probably won't be the case.

 

[MrBishop]

Y'know Bish always complains aboot people
not reading his posts all the way through.

The entry above is a prime reason
no one does...

"If" the 'inventors of the Internet' so chose
they could maintain control over it.

But sadly that probably won't be the case.

It'd be a huge and horribly expensive task, plus the legal issues of crossing boundaries alone would make it a nigh impossible task for the inventors of the internet. How do you prosecute someone in Tokyo from the USA, without permission from Japan? You can't. Why? Because you can't request access to records from the ISPs in Japan from anywhere but Japan. Even if you did, how could you bring them to trial? Which laws apply? Search and seisure? Which jail? Which judges? etc...

Hence the need for an international group with multinational laws. The UN does lack the teeth for this though..which is why I mentioned INTERPOL.

Oh...and I don't complain about people not reading my stuff all the way through...you're thinking about someone else.

***
btw...you have issues with my analogy?

 

[Inkara1]

I'd wonder why you would know how tough it actually is to grasp a $2 hooker in a K-Y factory.

 

[Winky]

It'd be a huge and horribly expensive task

What would?

plus the legal issues of crossing boundaries alone would make it a nigh impossible task for the inventors of the internet

huh, the internet in it's current form has no boundaries and that's what pisses them people off.

How do you prosecute someone in Tokyo from the USA, without permission from Japan? You can't

Why? Because you can't request access to records from the ISPs in Japan from anywhere but Japan. Even if you did, how could you bring them to trial? Which laws apply? Search and seizure? Which jail? Which judges? etc...

Mebbe now you are beginning to get a clue?
The quote unquote internet is all knowing all seeing
it is everywhere and nowhere at once. It transcends national boundaries. An ISP is a business, it is an entity that you can get a hold of. Do you have a clue?
Would the corrupt U.N. have dominion over ISP's (private businesses) the world over?

Hence the need for an international group with multinational laws. The UN does lack the teeth for this though. Which is why I mentioned INTERPOL.

Um no? Does the U.N. have dominion over U.S. highways?
Why would they have any control over OUR information superhighway?

btw...you have issues with my analogy?

yep
Can Interpol waltz into your home and drag you out without Canadian intervention?

no

Giving control of the Internet to the U.N. is a bad idea.
You notice, the entities currently in charge of it aren’t screaming for the U.N.
to take it over? It is entirely their idea. Hmmm, wunder why?

Funny thing is if we don’t want to hand it over to them there’s not
one damn thing they can do about it!

Wait til they get a hold of it.
They will TAX it!

There will be a napster-like back channel internet start up and no one
in the U.S. will go on the U.N. internet.

Like we need a blackmarket internet?