On The "UN Model" Of Internet VS US Hegemonic View

[Annie]

In spite of the title, I'm guessing you all know which way I swing:

http://www.bizzyblog.com/?p=823

too many links:

11/13/2005
About That Nov. 16-18 UN Internet Conference in Tunisia (takeover attempt)
Filed under: Economy, Taxes & Government — TBlumer @ 11:45 am

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

To Kofi Annan and the other snakes who say that authority over the Internet “should be shared with the international community” (i.e., “surrendered unilaterally”), even while conceding that “The United States …. has exercised its oversight responsibilities fairly and honorably,” I say:

Wayne
Ya want it?
Just try to come and get it!
Better yet–Build your own.

DETAILED POST:

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Conference will take place in Tunisia this coming Wednesday through Friday (Nov. 16-18).

It has become very clear in the past few months that the European Union and the United Nations intend to use this conference to attempt to intimidate the United States into changing how the Internet is governed and managed.

The biggest concerns over changing how things are done now are:

* Human rights will suffer–The concern (near end at link) is that an alternative governance and management regime might be hostile to fundamental human rights. The worries are not unfounded. A prominent press freedom group based in Paris(!) has strong reservations about changing the current operation and control structure:

Those who oppose U.N. or other multilateral control note that some of the governments pushing hardest for a change are also the world’s most repressive when it comes to preventing free speech on the Internet.
“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 independent media group Reporters Without Frontiers (RSF) asked Thursday, citing China, Cuba and others.
The Paris-based organization also rejected the E.U. suggestion, calling it “too vague to be a credible alternative.”
“It has to be admitted that the U.S. has managed to develop the Internet without major problems and that it broadly respects online freedom of expression,” it said.
“So let us hope an acceptable compromise - that reduces government intervention to a minimum and guarantees freedom of expression - will be found at the WSIS.
“If not, it would be best to leave things as they are.”

It’s worth noting that the European Union’s initial offensive to browbeat the US into changing its current Internet role, as the UK TimesOnline notes, “received the backing of states known to stifle free speech.” And how about a French-based organization in the heart of the EU admitting that we’re doing a good job with the Internet?
* (The implied evil of) American “unilateralism” (when it is this unilateralism that has taken the Internet to its current remarkable state)–This isn’t an issue as much as it is an emotional appeal. Responding to this, US Ambassador David A. Gross, the senior diplomat representing the US at the upcoming conference, says that he consulted intensely (link requires subscription) with governments and industry before the US Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued its four perfectly reasonable principles of Internet governance in June (original not numbered; full text of the fourth principle is provided for clarity; my comments are in italics):
1. The United States Government intends to preserve the security and stability of the Internet’s Domain Name and Addressing System (DNS). (No other entity can credibly make this guarantee.)
2. Governments have legitimate interest in the management of their country code top level domains (ccTLD). (Of course they do, and no one is in their way, as long as they don’t mess with “security and stability.”)
3. ICANN is the appropriate technical manager of the Internet DNS. (Is anyone claiming that ICANN isn’t doing its job well, or that it’s suffering from interference in carrying out its mission? I didn’t think so.)
4. Dialogue related to Internet governance should continue in relevant multiple fora. Given the breadth of topics potentially encompassed under the rubric of Internet governance there is no one venue to appropriately address the subject in its entirety. While the United States recognizes that the current Internet system is working, we encourage an ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders around the world in the various fora as a way to facilitate discussion and to advance our shared interest in the ongoing robustness and dynamism of the Internet. In these fora, the United States will continue to support market-based approaches and private sector leadership in Internet development broadly. (We’ll talk about anything relating to how the Internet is managed and how to further develop it, just not about how it is governed. The thing that REALLY bothers those who want to usurp Internet governance is the language in this fourth principle on markets and the private sector, i.e., NOT meddling governments.)
* Substance (us) vs. process (them)–To quote the previously linked WSJ piece: “Europeans tend to value process more, while Americans prefer results. The EU itself was born out of a process whose aim was to prevent new war in Europe and, thus, the EU is valued for its own sake irrespective of its inefficiencies. Americans find it difficult to love multilateral bodies that don’t produce results — or might endanger achievement. You can’t come up with more succinct statement of our fundamental differences, or in the current situation, a better reason NOT to allow anyone from the EU or the UN to get their grubby “consensus-driven” hands on something as important as the inner workings of the Internet.

What will happen if, as expected, the US stares down the world’s interlopers in Tunisia? The Cassandras would have you believe that the world will devolve into a Babel-like collection of “multiple Internets” if the current dispute isn’t resolved. Bryan Carney at OpinionJournal.com essentially says “let them go” (link may require registration), and that mutual self-interest will prevent the feared communications nightmare:

The U.S. government has led many to believe that this is equivalent to dismantling the Internet itself. But it is bluffing.
Here’s how it might work. At some point, China will grow tired of the U.S. refusal to give up control to the U.N., and it will secede from the status quo. It will set up its own root server, tweaked to allow access only to those sites the government deems nonthreatening, and simply order every Internet service provider in the country to use it instead of Icann’s. The change will be seamless to most users, but China will have set up its own private Net, one answerable to the people’s revolutionaries rather than to the U.S. Commerce Department.
Others may follow suit. Root servers could spring up in France, or Cuba, or Iran. In time, the Internet might look less like the Internet and more like, say, the phone system, where there is no “controlling legal authority” on the international level. More liberal-minded countries would probably, if they did adopt a local root-server, allow users to specify which server they wanted to query when typing in, say, Microsoft.com.
As a technical means of content control, going “split root,” as they say in the business, is too compelling for governments not to give it a try. But the user experience would likely be much the same as it ever was most of the time. ISPs, as well as most vaguely democratic governments, would have an interest in ensuring broad interoperability, just as no one in Saudi Arabia or China has yet decided that dialing +1-202-456-1414–the White House switchboard number–from those countries should go somewhere else, like Moammar Gadhafi’s house. Nothing stops phone companies from doing things like that, except that the market expects a certain consistency in how phone calls are directed, so it is in the interests of the operators to supply what the market expects. The same principle would apply in a split-root world.
Would it be better if countries that want to muck around with the Net just didn’t? Sure. But they do want to, and they will, and it would be far better, in the long run, if they did so on their own, without a U.N. agency to corrupt or give them shelter. It’s time to drop the apocalyptic rhetoric about a split root file and start looking beyond the age of a U.S.-dominated Internet. Breaking up is hard to do, but in this case, the alternative would be worse.

I agree. A fragmented (but not for long) Internet beats a UN-controlled Internet by a mile.
____________________

UPDATE: As I have noted before (outdated or unavailable links have been updated), I would expect a UN-controlled Internet to have:

* the financial accountability of African dictators,
* combined with the incorruptbility of The United Nations,
* along with the respect for human rights, online freedom, personal privacy, intellectual property, and global brand names mainland China is so noted for,
* with a dash of the sanctity and great feeling for human life found in American radicals and Islamic terrorists.

 

[Annie]

Which is too bad, you may all be paying for this soon:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/09/AR2005110901985.html

The Internet Is in Good Hands


Thursday, November 10, 2005; Page A28

While Secretary General Kofi Annan assured us that the United Nations has no intention of censoring the Internet [op-ed, Nov. 5], he also expressed concerns about the Net being used to "glorify Nazism or other hateful ideologies." Unfortunately, hate speech is subject to broad interpretation. I wonder how countries such as China, Cuba, Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Zimbabwe, all members of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, would rule on the subject.

Another concern is the historical desire of the United Nations to develop an international tax to fund its operations to free it from a reliance on the contributions of individual nations. The United Nations has proposed an international airline tax, but this would fail because the organization doesn't have taxing authority in individual countries.


But control of the Internet, assigning domains, etc. -- that's a different story. Call it a fee or a tax, if the United Nations had control of the Internet, it could deny service if it wasn't paid.

The United States has had an exemplary record of making the Internet available to friends and non-friends alike. It sees freedom of speech and open communications as the best hope of promoting freedom around the world. Only if the United States abuses its governance of the Internet should anyone consider a shift in control.

CROSBY BOYD

Sanibel, Fla.

 

[Annie]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/11/AR2005111101408.html

Keep the Internet Free

By Arch Puddington

Saturday, November 12, 2005; Page A25

Delegates from around the world will gather next week in Tunisia for what is known as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Few people are aware of WSIS's existence, its mission or the purpose of this conference. That is unfortunate, since the principal agenda item calls for a wholesale change in governance of the Internet that could lead to a significant setback for global freedom of information.

Although many are under the impression that the Internet is unregulated, this is not entirely the case. There are a number of technical issues -- such as the allocation of the dot-com or dot-net designations or the country codes that are attached to e-mails -- that must be determined by a central entity. This job is currently handled by an American nonprofit: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). With an international staff on three continents, ICANN has met its mandate in a way that all agree has been fair and nonpartisan.


While ICANN functions on a charter from the Commerce Department, the U.S. government has followed a strict hands-off policy; ICANN's actions are transparent and decisions are made only after extensive consultation with Internet companies, governments, techies and freedom-of-expression organizations. ICANN has contributed to the unique nature of the Internet as a creative and innovative means of communication that links people and ideas across national boundaries -- for the most part outside the control of government.

But demands are growing for the "internationalization" of Internet governance. To this end, a number of countries are pressing to remove oversight from ICANN and place it under the auspices of a new organization that would be part of the U.N. system. Advocates of this arrangement make no claims that the current system is flawed. Instead, they focus on the supposed "injustice" or "inappropriateness" of a system overseen by an American agency. And there is an ulterior motive behind the clamor for change.

In a Nov. 5 op-ed column in The Post, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that a U.N. role in Internet governance would be benign and would concentrate on expanding the Internet into the developing world. But while Annan's intentions are no doubt well-meaning, the same cannot be said for the coalition of U.N member states making the loudest noise for change. Among them are regimes that have taken measures to control their citizens' access to the Internet and have championed global controls over Internet content. These include some of the world's most repressive states: Cuba, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Other governments have weighed in to support U.N. oversight, either out of anti-Americanism, a reflexive commitment to international governance or a belief that Internet content needs to be reined in.

Although U.N. officials deny any intention to broaden ICANN's mandate, past U.N. experience suggests that a limited mission can gradually expand into unanticipated territory under the relentless pressure of determined member states. Some of the most shameful U.N. episodes -- particularly regarding freedom issues -- have occurred because the world's democracies were outwitted by a coalition of the most repressive regimes -- the very coalition that is taking shape over Internet control. Working with determination and discipline, this alliance of dictatorships has already left the U.N. Human Rights Commission a shambles, something that Annan himself has deplored.

In this emerging contest, the position of the European Union is particularly disappointing. Initially aligned with the United States in support of Internet freedom, the E.U. recently went wobbly and proposed creation of a "forum" to govern the Internet, something different from ICANN though not under U.N. control -- this to the delight of Cuba and China.

Compounding the problem is the choice of Tunisia, a country with a woeful record of press freedom violations, as the WSIS conference's host. On Freedom House's global index of press freedom, Tunisia ranks near the bottom, right along with Iran and Saudi Arabia -- 173rd of 193 states. It is particularly zealous in restricting Internet content and has mobilized security forces to block Web sites, monitor e-mail and conduct surveillance of Internet cafes.

The United States delegation has pledged to stand firm in defense of ICANN while proposing a plan to allow more global discussion and debate on Internet issues. This is a good starting place; even better would be a decision by the European Union to align itself with the United States.

It is no secret why Iran, China and Cuba are lobbying so desperately to replace ICANN: The Internet has proven a potent weapon against state repression. In an age of media concentration, it has contributed mightily to democratization of the means of communication. It nullifies totalitarian schemes to monopolize the airwaves; in the age of the Internet, the total control portrayed by George Orwell in "1984" is simply impossible in all but the most hermetically sealed countries.

Given the stakes involved, it is incumbent on the world's democracies to stand firm against efforts to undermine this critical instrument of free ideas.

The writer is director of research at Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization that monitors political rights and civil liberties worldwide.

Why would anyone consider that the UN has the 'little guy's interests' at heart? When have they ever?

 

[Hobbit]

It is the goal of the U.N. to watch the U.S. do everything right, b!tch about it every step of the way, tell us how evil we are for doing it, tell us everything we're doing wrong, then demand control of it once we've done all the work. Take a look at our military as a perfect example. The U.N. criticizes us every two seconds for how big and powerful our military is, but every time they get in trouble, they demand that our evil military don blue hats and bail them out.