Fergie's Tech Blog

Internet users say debate over control misses point

Hear! Hear!

Tom Wright writes in The International Herald Tribune:

Talks on regulating the digital traffic of the 21st century ended without agreement on Friday, but the United States won some backing for its refusal to cede its sole control to an international body from groups representing ordinary Internet users.

Many Web surfers may not like the effective control the United States has over the Internet through its supervision of the Internet addressing system. But few of the user groups at the talks support involving the United Nations, which they say could lead to the politicization of the Internet.

"The UN is not a good body to run the Internet," said Jeanette Hofmann, a German academic representing the Internet Governance Caucus, a nongovernmental group. "We don't want nondemocratic countries to have influence over a system that is so important to the freedom of expression."

The European Union late Wednesday joined calls from other nations for giving supervisory power to an intergovernmental body, but the idea was rejected by Washington as leading to unnecessary bureaucratization. The uncompromising U.S. stance has led to a deadlock in the talks, called the World Summit on the Information Society, which started in 2003 and are set to conclude in Tunisia next month.

Groups representing Web surfers at the talks complained that the dispute between the United States and the rest of the world over administration is overshadowing more important issues, such as cleaning up spam from e-mail systems and combating cyber crime and identity theft, areas where they say governments should play a more active role.

posted by Fergie @ 9/30/2005 03:50:00 PM