Fergie's Tech Blog

Newsweek Interview: Vint Cerf on the WSIS

ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf at U.N. Internet
summit held at United Nations headquarters in New York,
March 2004.
Image source: Declan McCullagh

Hastings: Critics say the U.S. government basically controls the Internet.
Cerf: That's bulls-—t. I'm sorry, I'm not supposed to say that to reporters, but that's just a very bad misunderstanding. Ninety-nine percent of the Internet is in private hands. If you've got a computer at home, and a cable box or DSL line, you own a piece of the Internet. Most of the Internet is owned by the private sector, by businesses, by ISPs, by individuals, by governments—well, that's not [the] private sector, but it's not ICANN either and it's not the United States.

Hastings: So what about talk of a battle between the European Union and the United States over control of ICANN?
Cerf: Governments frequently don't believe anything can work if nobody's in charge. As you look around the landscape, you discover that the only entity that has specific high-level responsibility, or unique responsibility for the Internet, is ICANN. And so the immediate and incorrect conclusion is that if ICANN has this unique responsibility, it must be in charge of the Internet. That's, frankly, not true.

posted by Fergie @ 11/20/2005 01:41:00 PM