[governance] UK Guardian: EU says internet could fall apart

[karen banks]

hi

Full page spread in the financial section of the UK Guardian - but 
dramatic headline, but a useful overview actually..

unfrtunatly, the summary/assessment of the 4 proposals on the table 
(a boxed column in print) doesn't seem to be in the digital version

karen

http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,7496,1590244,00.html
EU says internet could fall apart

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

Richard Wray
Wednesday October 12, 2005


Guardian

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
<http://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.

MediaGuardian.co.uk (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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