December 10, 2003

UN taking over the Internet

from TechNewsWorld bq. Paul Twomey, the president of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, found out what it feels like to be voiceless. bq. On Friday night, Twomey, who flew 20 hours to Geneva from a meeting in Vietnam to take part in a preparatory session for this week's United Nations summit meeting on Internet issues, was escorted to the exit of the meeting room by guards after participants suddenly decided to exclude observers. bq. The move underscores the wrath of countries that for years have been unhappy with what they perceive as their voicelessness over how the Internet is run and over U.S. ownership of key Internet resources. It also foretells the level of criticism that both the U.S. government and the Internet Corporation, or ICANN, may face at the UN meeting, one of the largest gatherings ever of high-level government officials, business leaders and nonprofit organizations to discuss the Internet's future. bq. Formal meeting activities begin on Wednesday. Although more than 60 nations will be represented in Geneva by their heads of government, only a handful of industrial nations are sending their leaders. President George W. Bush has no plans to attend, though the U.S. government will be represented by other officials. bq. To the great frustration of the international community, ICANN, a private company under contract to the U.S. government to oversee the technical aspects of the Internet's address system, has been in a pole position of power since its formation in 1998, deciding such issues as when languages could be used as a communication tool by other nations. bq. Twomey, reached by mobile phone outside the conference room, said: At ICANN, anybody can attend meetings, appeal decisions or go to ombudsmen, and here I am outside a UN meeting room where diplomats most of whom know little about the technical aspects are deciding in a closed forum how 750 million people should reach the Internet. I am not amused. bq. Twomey said he, representatives of the news media and anyone who was not a government official had been evicted from the meeting. Clueless twits... But wait, there's more: bq. UN To Examine Governance bq. To that end, all countries participating in the UN gathering agreed Sunday that a working group should be set up under the auspices of the United Nations to examine Internet governance issues, including the question of whether more formal oversight of ICANN by governments or intragovernmental agencies is necessary, said Marcus Kummer, the Swiss Foreign Ministry's delegate and head of the UN meeting's working group on Internet governance. bq. Tuesday's private meeting will bring together heads of state from six African, five Middle Eastern, four European and two Asian countries as well as the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, and Erkki Liikanen, the European Union's commissioner for enterprise and information society. Conspicuously absent from the list of invitees in the private meeting are ICANN and the U.S. government, which has sent a delegation of 41 people to the Geneva meeting. Posted by DaveH at December 10, 2003 5:09 PM