[governance] People's Daily of China: US must hand over Internet control to the world

[Fahd A. Batayneh]

I see this whole debate on Internet control similar to the mandate of
ICANN; i.e. they are both under intense pressure to be internationalized,
yet they both are there to exist as is for a VERY long time.

Fahd

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 5:53 AM, Rebecca MacKinnon <
rebecca.mackinnon at gmail.com> wrote:

> A shot across the bow from China's government mouthpiece...
>
> http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/7915248.html
>  (People's Daily Online <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/>
> ) 11:10, August 18, 2012  <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/7915248.html#>
>   <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/7915248.html#>
>
>
> The Internet has become one of the most important resources in the world in just a fewdecades, but the governance mechanism for such an important international resourceis still dominated by a private sector organization and a single country.
>
> The U.S. government said in a statement on July 1,
> 2005 that its CommerceDepartment would continue to support the work of Internet Corporation for AssignedNames and Numbers (ICANN), and indefinitely retain oversight of the Internet’s 13 rootservers.
>
>
> This indicated the U.S. decision to retain ultimate control over the global Internet,which enabled it to unilaterally close the Internet of another country. A suddenlyparalyzed Internet would definitely cause huge social and economic losses to thecountry.
>
> More and more countries are beginning to question the U.S. control over the world’s
> Internet as the international resource should be managed and supervised by all
> countries together. However, the United States has conducted a pre-emptive strike,and refused to give up control over the Internet in the name of protecting the resource.The refusal reflects its hegemonic mentality and double standards.
>
> The United States controls and owns all cyberspaces in the world, and other countries
> can only lease Internet addresses and domain names from the United States, leadingto the U.S. hegemonic monopoly over the world’s Internet.
>
> During the Iraq War, the U.S. government in 2003 asked ICANN to terminate services
> relating to Iraq’s top-level domain name “.iq” and then all websites with the domainname “.iq” disappeared overnight. The United States has taken advantage of its
> control over the Internet to launch an invisible war against disobedient countries and to
> intimidate and threaten other countries.
>
> The United States have repeatedly called for “protecting Internet freedom.”In fact, it is
>  only protecting its own “Internet freedom” even at the expense of other countries. Ten
> of the global Internet’s 13 root servers are located in the United States, and the U.S.government can supervise the Internet for national security reasons according to the
> U.S. law. By doing so, the United States actually gains access to all information
> transmitted online, while other countries can do nothing about it.
>
> Ultimate control over the Internet has been an important tool for the United States to
> promote its power politics and hegemony worldwide, and any other country may fallvictim to this. As a big country on the Internet, China opposes the U.S. unreasonable
> and unilateral management of the Internet, and seeks to work with the international
> community to build a new international Internet governance system.
>
> --
> Rebecca MacKinnon
> Author, Consent of the Networked <http://consentofthenetworked.com/>
> Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation<http://newamerica.net/user/303>
> Co-founder, Global Voices <http://globalvoicesonline.org/>
> Twitter: @rmack <http://twitter.com/rmack>
> Office: +1-202-596-3343
>
>
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