November 8th, 2007
Internet Forum all about domain control
Two years ago a crisis of sorts was avoided in Tunis when world leaders agreed to let the U.S. remain in charge of the Internet. Part of the deal was annual conference to discuss such issues as how domain names are assigned, a task currently under the control of ICANN. That meeting, the Internet Governance Forum, is happening right now in Rio — and developing nations are watching carefully to see if the forum has any teeth.
Not much was accomplished at the 2006 meeting in Athens, but this year expectations are higher, the AP’s Anick Jesdanun reported.
“If last year was viewed as a trial run, this year is in a sense a bit more important,” said Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada. “If little comes out of this, I think there will be growing concern that the IGF is little more than a talk shop and a place to meet.”
The forum is obstensibly supposed to figure out how to bring Internet access to people in the developing world, but an awful lot of heat has been developing over domain names.
“What will be a shame is a repeat of Tunis pushing out these important issues,” said Emily Taylor, director of legal and policy for Nominet, which operates Britain’s “.uk” domain. “These were very, very hot issues during the world summit, issues over which people violently disagreed.”
But remember this is a UN forum. So things move slowly, bureaucratically, one might say.
“Let’s progress slowly but that’s not to say go backwards or just spin our wheels,” said Hadil da Rocha Vianna, co-chairman of the forum’s advisory group and director of science and technology at Brazil’s foreign ministry. “So in Rio, the concrete results would be to advance in these debates, deepening themes debated in Athens.”
“I don’t expect the meetings to change the world and come up with some real, major new decision on the re-architecture of this or that,” Markus Kummer, the U.N. official who heads the forum’s secretariat, said. “But I expect interesting meetings and interesting discussions (to improve) understanding of how the Internet works and what can be done to make it safer.”
A US Ambassador and an ICANN representative said the forum’s purpose it communication not negotiation.
“Everyone has an equal opportunity to participate,” Ambassador David Gross said, making the forum “a very poor vehicle for anyone who would seek to come to any consensus, decision-making process.”
“It’s fine to have the panel, and it’s fine to have the discussions about it,” said Theresa Swinehart, ICANN’s vice president for global and strategic partnership. “But for the forum to start going into a direction that ends up coming out with recommendations, it would result in becoming four days of negotiating text. That would defeat the purpose,” she continued. “You lose the entire benefit of information-sharing. People would hold back on what they are saying.”
