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EU wants international control of Internet
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-30 21:43
The European Union insisted Friday the job of Internet traffic cop must be
shared by governments and the private sector, AP reported.
The U.S. wants to remain the Internet's ultimate authority, rejecting calls
in a United Nations meeting in Geneva for a U.N. body to take over.
EU spokesman Martin Selmayr rejected American claims the EU had changed
direction.
"We are looking for a new cooperation model, a model that allows Internet
governance and the laying down of public policy principles in coordination by
all countries which are interested in the governance of the Internet because the
Internet is a global resource," he said.
"The EU ... is very firm on this position."
The Geneva talks were the last preparatory meeting before November's World
Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia.
Negotiators said there was a growing sense a compromise had to be reached and
that no single country ought to be the ultimate authority over such a vital part
of the global economy.
A top U.S. official said the U.S. was "deeply disappointed," with an EU
proposal, made Wednesday, which appeared to support wresting control of domain
names from the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers,
or ICANN, and placing it with an intergovernmental group, possibly under the
United Nations.
"We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet,"
said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international
communications and information policy at the State Department.
"Some countries want that. We think that's unacceptable."
But Selmayr insisted the EU and U.S. were not that far apart though tensions
have sunk any chance of agreement in Geneva this week.
"That doesn't mean they're won't be a result in the end," he said.
"We are very close with the United States on a number of important
principles. It is not for governments to control the Internet. We need more
private sector involvement and the current working methods of ICANN are very
efficient."
The stalemate over who should serve as the principal traffic cops for
Internet routing and addressing may derail the November summit which aims to
ensure a fair sharing of the Internet for the benefit of the whole world.
Internet governance historically has been the role of the U.S., which created
the original system and funded much of its early development.
While this satisfies some, developing countries are upset that Western
countries that got onto the Internet first gobbled up most available addresses
required for computers to connect, leaving poor nations to share a limited
supply.
ICANN now controls the Internet's master directories, which tell Web browsers
and e-mail programs how to direct traffic.
Net surfers worldwide use them daily but policy decisions could, at a stroke,
make all Web sites ending in a specific suffix essentially unreachable.
Though the computers themselves — 13 in all, known as "root" servers — are in
private hands, they contain government-approved lists of the 260 or so Internet
suffixes, such as ".com."
In 1998, the U.S. Commerce Department selected ICANN, a private organization
with international board members, to decide what goes on those lists. Commerce
kept veto power, but indicated it would let go once ICANN met a number of
conditions.
But earlier this year, the United States indicated Commerce would keep that
control, regardless of whether and when those conditions were met.
A U.N. panel has outlined four possible options for the future of Internet
governance, ranging from keeping the current system intact to revamping it under
new international agencies formed under the auspices of the
U.N.
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