[governance] Report Public Hearing

[William Drake]

Also interesting is the display of diplomatic finesse that has made  
Reding a beloved figure in DC.
>>
>> "I trust that President Obama will have the courage, the wisdom and  
>> the respect for the global nature of the internet to pave the way  
>> in September for a new, more accountable, more transparent, more  
>> democratic and more multilateral form of Internet Governance," said  
>> EU Commissioner Viviane Reding in her Internet video message this  
>> morning. "The time to act is now. And Europe will be ready to  
>> support President Obama in his efforts."

So presumably if he doesn't follow her instructions and buy into a G12  
etc, he lacks courage, wisdom, and respect for the Internet's global  
nature.

The framing and carefully laid political groundwork (reminiscent of  
the "cooperation at the level of principles" announcement WSIS II  
Prepcom 3) undoubtedly will help make it easy on NTIA or anyone else  
in DC trying to argue for ICANN's independence and globalization...And  
I'm sure right wingers in the US won't take notice...oops, wait...Fox  
News has it covered.  More to come...


Europeans: U.S. Should Give Up Control of Internet

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,518808,00.html

Monday, May 04, 2009

STRASBOURG, France —  The United States has too much control over the  
Internet and needs to give it up, a European Union bureaucrat declared  
Monday.

EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding, a Luxembourgian,  
called for "full privatization" of the Internet Corporation for  
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), demanding that it be removed from  
the supervision of the U.S. Department of Commerce when its operating  
agreement expires on Sept. 30.

"In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department  
of only one country has oversight of an Internet function which is  
used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the  
world," said Reding in a statement.

She purports to be calling for less, not more, government involvement  
in the Internet, using a free-market argument against the Commerce  
Department's control of ICANN.

Longtime Euroskeptics may be surprised by that approach, as the  
European Commission normally sees fit to issue binding regulations  
governing all aspects of public life on all member states, right down  
to the sizes of apples and oranges in street markets.

ICANN is a non-profit organization based in Marina del Rey, Calif.,  
which among other tasks supervises the top-level domains of the  
Internet, such as ".com" and ".net," as well as country-code domains  
such as ".fr" and ".uk."

The U.S. military and defense-research labs at universities across the  
country built the Internet in the 1970s, and ever since then it's  
essentially been controlled by the U.S. government.

This has upset other countries' governments. In 2005, a U.N. body  
tried to persuade the U.S. to hand over control, arguing that no one  
nation should run such a vital means of communication.

The U.S. successfully quashed that attempt, partly by pointing out  
that it's been a very hands-off landlord and mostly lets ICANN do  
whatever it wants.

One exception to that trend involved ICANN's proposed ".xxx" domain  
for pornographic Web sites, which would have kept online porn in its  
own sector.

Pressure from American politicians killed the idea two years ago,  
causing consternation among their less prudish European counterparts.

Yet Reding may have undermined her own free-market argument by  
simultaneously proposing a new international body, a "G12 for Internet  
Governance" that would oversee ICANN and be made up of voting  
representatives from around the world.

Like the 2005 plan, that would essentially be handing over Internet  
control not to the free market, but to the same creaky collection of  
international bureaucrats who control the EU and the U.N. — which  
might mean a lot more government involvement in day-to-day Internet  
operations.

The European Commission plans to hold a series of public hearings on  
the issue beginning Wednesday in Brussels.




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