United Nations to seek control of the Internet?

[Bradylama]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,104413,00.html

WASHINGTON — A global summit scheduled in December may result in a proposal to put the Internet under United Nations control — an idea that has met solid resistance from the United States.



"There are some countries that have been very adamant to get their governments to play a bigger role in Internet management," said Ambassador David Gross, the State Department’s coordinator for international communications and information policy. He is leading the U.S. delegation to the World Summit on the Information Society (search), scheduled to meet Dec. 10-12 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Gross said that while the U.S. supports greater access for all nations to the Internet, it will resist any efforts to take the Net out of the private sector.

"We will continue to fight hard to ensure that the Internet remains a balanced enterprise among all stakeholders — one of these stakeholders is government, but it is one of many stakeholders," Gross told Foxnews.com, adding that "it must be private sector-led. That is very important to us."

The WSIS, sponsored by the International Telecommunications Union (search), the United Nations' key agency on telecommunications, will bring together more than 50 heads of state, along with an expected 5,000 to 6,000 government, business and non-profit representatives from across the globe to discuss in part “the yawning telecommunications gap between emerging economies and the developed world.”

The summit’s goal is to achieve consensus on a draft declaration of principles and draft plan of action, which reportedly includes a recommendation to place the governance of the Internet under the ITU or another body created by U.N. member nations, say observers. This is one of several provisions now being debated in contentious preliminary discussions.

“Standardization is one of the essential building blocks of the Information Society,” reads the most recent draft of the WSIS Draft Declaration of Principles. “There should be particular emphasis on the development and adoption of international standards.”

The effort for global control of the Internet is reportedly led by China, which allows its own citizens online access, but it is tightly controlled by a giant firewall and monitored by government surveillance.

China has so far been joined in its efforts by representatives of Syria, Egypt, Vietnam and South Africa, said Ronald Koven, European representative for the World Press Freedom Committee (search), an international media watchdog based in the United States.

Other reports indicate that Russia, India, Saudi Arabia and Brazil may be on board, too.

Supporters of global governance say that the Internet should be administered and managed by a governmental body, with uniform standards for security and better access for poorer countries. They point to WSIS statistics indicating that only one-third of developing countries' inhabitants are Internet users. They say fewer than 3 percent of Africans can even access telecommunications of any kind.

Though the WSIS organization does not advocate specific plans for global management of the Net, it does suggest support for global principles. “The summit aims to jumpstart and speed access and adoption of new technologies through active collaboration and commitment from all,” said a WSIS information brief on its Web site, www.wsis.org.

Currently, the International Corporation of Assigned Network and Numbers (search), a non-profit corporation with an international board of directors, manages Internet Protocol space allocation, domain names and root server system functions. It does not have content or security control functions.

Critics of the global Internet idea say certain nations like China want to take away ICANN’s duties and place them under governmental auspices, along with increased control over security and content, placing freedom of press and individual freedom of expression at serious risk.

“Those governments don’t have any democracy or free speech, it’s dangerous and we’re trying to stop it,” said Julio Munoz, executive director of the Inter American Press Association in Miami. “Of course we are concerned they will try to manipulate the free flow of information.”

He said his member organizations, which include Latin American publishers and journalists, are nervous about a potential crackdown on their freedoms resulting from any move toward Internet governance. He said they see it as a backdoor for subverting the freedom of the press as a whole.

Even if no consensus is reached on the WSIS plan of action, IAPA is concerned that governments back home will use the proposals to restrict the freedoms they have fought for so bitterly.

“We’re going to send a delegation there — to try and defend the press,” said Munoz, who recalled previously unsuccessful attempts in the 1970s and 1980s for U.N.-led media standards.

Peter Linton, a spokesman for the European Internet Foundation (search), which works closely with the Capitol Hill-based Internet Education Foundation, said he would be surprised if the U.S. and European nations were not firmly against the Chinese-led movement for global controls.

“I know the U.S. government has said it would do everything it could to prevent this,” he said. “I cannot speak for the European Commission, but I would suspect it would look at it with a jaundiced eye as well.”

Because so little agreement exists so far on what exactly should be in the declaration of principles, much less the plan of action, there appears to be little confidence that a consensus on Internet governance, which currently includes a reaffirmation of the United Nations' Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (search) — the right of free expression — for the Internet, will be achieved.

Debate has also centered on new intellectual property standards and special technology funding for poor nations.

President Bush is not scheduled to attend the summit, which will be followed by another meeting in Tunisia in November 2005.

Hell no. In no way should a higher order ever control or regulate the content of the internet (with exceptions of snuff and child pornography).

Especially not by and organization that views "hate speech" as a war crime.

Not to mention the possibility of a UN Sales Tax on goods sold over the net. The lack of sales tax is part of the reason people purchase goods over the Net in the first place. Doing so would drive internet companies to lower or raise prices to either remain competitive or make the same amount of profit.

 

[Murdoch]

I agree. The ICANN appears to be doing a good job.

I don't think this (or anything) coming in front of the UN is important though; since the permanent member veto means that if the US, Russia, France, England or China don't want something to happen, it won't. Period. This is even more true when 3 of the 5 permanent votes are against it- a fairly rare event indeed.

 

[Briosafreak]

It doesn`t have anything to do with taxes, in the UN sistem there`s already control over some technical stuff of the Internet, in the International Telecommunication Union , and that is working fine,and now many countries want to stop the ICANN of continuing to allow the intermediary american companies to keep the bandwith prices too high, through cartelization, wich allows that the telecom companies that sell bandwith in the first place are selling it for the cheapest price in six years, while the "grossists" are selling it by the highest prices ever. This is stoping the spread of technology in the third world.
The last drop was the Verizon affair, that should never had happened in the first place, if ICCAM pro actively regulated things in an efective fashion, instead of beeing worried with creating high priced domain names.

The internet isn`t american, it belongs to the world. It has problems, hacking, piracy, child porn, lack of access in the third world, overcharging of domain names and bandwith, terrorism and so forth can only be attacked with a real global entity, not a California based company where the majority of its top members belong to comercial corporations. It is a non-profit association, fine, but the simple fact that it doesn`t have public elections of board members, and the Departement of Commerce, that should have some control of their actions, to see if everything goes by the book, instead is more woried with... well you`ve guessed it, american comerce, is enough to make one think a bit on its usefulness.

Local Problems local solutions, global problems global solutions, it`s that simple.

For more on the ICANN , both good and bad things you can go here
http://www.icannwatch.org/icann4beginners.shtml

On a biased pro UN vision of the issues at stake you can go here
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=9068&Cr=information&Cr1=technology

 

[Murdoch]

I had no idea Briosafreak (which I hope was obvious) that any of this existed. AFAIK, the internet just works, I have (had) no idea that this existed.

Thanks

 

[Bradylama]

The internet may not belong to America, but the Servers do. A significant majority of internet companies and servers are located in America. Maybe if taxes weren't so high elsewhere there'd be more room for foreign countries to develop more significant competition on the information market.

There's no reason that America should be forced to do something when the rest of the world can easily set up an "informational infrastructure" if they tried.


Though your argument is a compelling one, Briosa. I'll have to present it elsewhere where this debate is taking place.

 

[Briosafreak]

The internet may not belong to America, but the Servers do. A significant majority of internet companies and servers are located in America. Maybe if taxes weren't so high elsewhere there'd be more room for foreign countries to develop more significant competition on the information market.

There's no reason that America should be forced to do something when the rest of the world can easily set up an "informational infrastructure" if they tried.

brady do a litle check and you`ll be surprised how many backbones are outside the US and how much more advanced in internet access and netliterates countries like Finland, Norway or South Corea are in comparision with the States. You are going to have a surprise, believe me.

One thing though i`m not saying that the new organisation should exist outside the US or even that the majority of the technical board couldn`t be american, all i`m saying is that it should start a more global perspective, with views from other places beeing more taken into account. I don`t want to create an UNESCO controled by the french and the african countries against the US, i just think that non-accountability and the hegemony of american comercial interests make the UN proposal seem better than what happens today. There are other options, i`m open to those, although i do like the work of the ITU.

 

[Bradylama]

Alrighty then.

I thought you were supporting the UN more. My problem with this concept is a political body controlling a form of speech. If you look at it, the internet is very similar in respects to speech as a newspaper or music.

If something like the WTO would seek to regulate the internet I wouldn't have a problem with that. I've got no problems with things being regulated by the global private sector.

 

[Briosafreak]

Brady if you go here you`ll see that the UN system isn`t comprised of political groups, except for the general assembly and the Security Council. There are a few that have been highjacked by government agendas in the past, like the Unesco by the French or the World Bank by the Americans, but that`s the exception, not the rule.

It`s curious to see how people know so litlle about the UN, and that doesn`t happen only in the States.

 

[Bradylama]

The UN, is however comprised of representatives of nations. And thus there presents the problem.

If political representatives regulate something they'll do the best they can to make sure that it benefits their nation the most.

If the internet was being regulated by an international business organization, however, they'd do their best to make sure that the most amount of people benefitted from their decisions. The more people benefit, the more money they generate. Global business matters should be handled by the Global Economy, not a Global Political Forum.

 

[Briosafreak]

If you see the internet as Global Business yes, but even then it needs rules that come from the political side, to stop abuses, like you have regulations on monopolies or dumping.

But the internet is more than business, don`t you agree?

And the UN is about compromise, again there`s a world beyond the General assembly and the Security Council, now in the business world it´s just about money, there`s no mechanism that implies that money should go to the majority.

And that`s why governments are the forces behind organizations like the WTO, there are different interests, and it´s better that they are heard on the international organizations, if not their action won`t matter for lack of capacity in getting the nations affected by the decisions to comply.

For more technical organizations then there´s the possibility of getting a more technical and impartial activity, as you can see on the description of the activities of the majority of the organizations on that list i put on the link.

 

[Sander]

The internet was not started as, and still isn't, just a business environment. It is, most importantly, a ways to communicate, and to find and share information. It is also a haven of free speech, or at least it could be. For this reason, the internet should be as decentralized as possible. Factually, nothing but DNS servers are needed for the internet to function. The problem here is when one organization(ICANN) controls important parts of internet, and therefore has, basically, a monopoly. And it does have a monopoly, and worse, it cannot really be held accountable for almost anything.

What needs to happen is a new form of hierarchy for the internet. With the decentralization applied even further, and (hopefully) little control over it. The UN might not be the best board to do such a thing, however, that still needs to be seen. It could very well do a better job than ICANN, but I'd like to see what they want to do with it specifically first.

 

[welsh]

The UN, is however comprised of representatives of nations. And thus there presents the problem.

Indeed, but that part of the UN system does not extend to all things. There are many bodies which provide technical administration of things that most people take for granted. Briosa mention one above, also think of things like weights and measurements, postal services, to such things as health, labor, corporate development, environmental protection, refugees. So many different things, really. It would be virtually impossible to rebuild.

I am not sure how representatives of nations presents the problem. This is a global organization based on the ideals of collective efforts, not so much the hegemony of powerful states.

If political representatives regulate something they'll do the best they can to make sure that it benefits their nation the most.

Often this is true in some capacities, but overall its not.

But you would be surprised how often people who get involved in the UN are often more strongly allied to the organization than their country. If you examine the staff at the World Bank or IMF, you will see that its very difficult for an American national to get in, but there are lots of folks from foreign nations working there. Do they look after their own states? Generally no. Most are more involved in their own careers in the UN.

I was speaking with a woman from Kenya (or maybe it was Tanzania) who is a member of the World Bank staff and she was telling me how easy it is for members, once they join, to more or less forget their own countries. While many of the staff do come from foreign nations, getting into the UN is usually a matter of merit.

This is a bigger problem if you consider it that way. Because of the merit based staffing at the UN, many of the best and brightest of developing nations join the staffs of international organizations. This results in a "brain drain" away from developing states to international organizations (most of which exist in highly developed nations).

So its often fair to say that while the appointed members of states that are supposed to be representatives in International organizations (such as ambassadors to the UN who vote at the General Assembly) have a more political role. Most of the staff that participates is not really politically affiliated- merely technical bureaucratic staff that seeks to further their own and their agency goals.

If the internet was being regulated by an international business organization, however, they'd do their best to make sure that the most amount of people benefitted from their decisions. The more people benefit, the more money they generate. Global business matters should be handled by the Global Economy, not a Global Political Forum.

That's a bit naive. Businesses are not interested in helping people, they are interested in making money. Also, you are neglecting the fact that as economies grow, the role of the state or government becomes more involved. Virtually every state that has benefitted from globalization has actually seen an increase in their administrative staff necessary to administer that.

Brady, here's what you are missing. Global economy runs on markets. But economists generally don't understand how markets are created. Why? Because the creation of a market is itself a collective action problem. One needs to come from outside the market to create the playing field that IS the market in the first place. That is the role of government.

Thus business will not take an interest in the poor, in economically developing less developed areas, in supporting social functions or causes. Because this does happen among the few states that have developed industrialized economies, doesn't mean it happens elsehwere. A broader look at the world shows that in most places (even with a high population) there is little in the way of social services or economic development.

WHy, because the agents of the economy are generally firms. Firms are self interested rational actors for the most part. They could give a shit about the poor or the people. They are too busy in competition with each other.

Thus capitalism is remarkable because it, ideally, takes the selfishness of the individuals and obtains a collective good- lower prices, better products through market competition. But you can't assume that a capitalist system could provide public goods- ie- infrastructure, regulatory services, and most importantly the creation of markets itself.

So lets get back to your statement. If it were true, that business would be helping people, than you would see more money being invested to find cures for the diseases that most effect a large part of the world. That would include malaria, TB and a variety of others. These are illnesses of the developing world that could be dealt with at a fairly low costs. Instead you see a lot of money being put into things like Viagra, cosmetic products and other goods that service the more developee world. When you see the move to make pharmaceuticals for AIDs and make them available to the mass of people that can't afford them, the Pharmaceutical companies balk. Why? There's no profit in it.

That's the problem. You are trying to provide a service to a global society through a technological innovation that could empower massive amounts of people. But that empowerment also means more competition from outside.

I will agree with Briosafreak. The internet is a global phenomena and there are parts fo the world that are very sophisticated than the US in that regard. Hell, there are places in the world where the general is more computer savvy. But the internet was a creation of the US. A project of universities and the military that was released to general public. But now it's something more than that. If companies profit from it, fine, but it's not theirs to monopolize either.

 

[Bradylama]

So obviously, the only logical conclusion would be to not regulate it at all. But somebody still needs to control the DNS.

There's no real "right" way to do this.