Fergie's Tech Blog

Reporters sans Frontières: Our Position on Internet Governance

Via Reporters sans Frontières.

The second stage of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis from 16 to 18 November will be a showy United Nations event where countries will try to agree on the legal and technical future of the Internet. How the Web is administered and regulated worldwide will be the hottest topic on the agenda.

The United States currently controls the main bodies that run the Internet, including the main one, ICANN, a California-based legal body that assigns domain names worldwide. Virtually every other country criticises this US monopoly as unacceptable.

The reaction is understandable because ICANN’s decisions, though they seem very technical, have direct political repercussions. It can, in theory, block access to country domain names (for example, all the .fr or .cn sites). Money is also an issue because the body that runs the Internet has power to give advantage to some technologies and thus certain firms. The recent hiring by Google of Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf, ICANN’s vice-president, has therefore raised concern.

The situation can certainly be criticised but the proposed remedies seem much worse. China, Cuba and the world’s other most repressive countries want to hand over control of the Internet to an independent supra-national body such as the United Nations. But the UN’s clumsy record on human rights - its Rights Commission was recently chaired by Libya - make the prospect a chilling one.

Do we really want the countries that censor the Internet and throw its users in prison to be in charge of regulating the flow of information on it ? The simple fact of holding of WSIS in Tunisia, whose president and his family control the national media and Internet access with an iron grip, shows that freedom of expression is not seen as a key issue at the Summit.

posted by Fergie @ 11/10/2005 09:30:00 AM