Thread: EU wants 'Internet G12' to govern cyberspace

EU wants 'Internet G12' to govern cyberspace


LEIGH PHILLIPS

05.05.2009 @ 09:21 CET


EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission wants the US to dissolve all government links with the body that 'governs' the internet, replacing it with an international forum for discussing internet governance and online security.

The rules and decisions on key internet governance issues, such as the creation of top level domains (such as .com and .eu) and managing the internet address system that ensures computers can connect to each other, are currently made by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private, not-for profit corporation based in California which operates under an agreement with the US Department of Commerce.

The decisions made by ICANN affect the way the internet works all around the world.

EU information society commissioner Viviane Reding on Monday (4 May) suggested a new model for overseeing the internet from October this year, when the Commerce Department agreement runs out.

She called on US President Barack Obama to fully privatise ICANN and set up an independent judicial body, described as a "G12 for internet governance," which she described as a "multilateral forum for governments to discuss general internet governance policy and security issues."

"I trust that President Obama will have the courage, the wisdom and the respect for the global nature of the internet to pave the way in September for a new, more accountable, more transparent, more democratic and more multilateral form of Internet Governance," she said via a video message posted on her commission website.

The expiry of the agreement between ICANN and the US government "opens the door for the full privatisation of ICANN, and it also raises the question of to whom ICANN should be accountable," she said.

"In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world."

Instead, Brussels would prefer that an international government forum that to meet twice a year makes recommendations by majority vote to the newly privatised ICANN. The forum would be restricted to representatives from 12 countries, with a regional balance taken into consideration.

Her "Internet G12" would include two representatives each from North America, South America, Europe and Africa, three representatives from Asia and Australia, as well as the Chairman of ICANN as a non-voting member. International organisations with competences in this field meanwhile could be given observer status.

The new US administration's position on global internet governance is not yet clear. However, during the Bush administration, Washington was steadfastly opposed to handing ICANN over to the United Nations.

The commission will hold a conference on Wednesday (6 May) in Brussels to discuss the issue with Europe's internet community.


euobserver.com

We invented the damned thing as a sharing of ideas between university types (the original computer gurus before Bill Gates) in the 1950s.
My staunch position is to tell these people where they can stuff it, in other words, of course.
Interesting op-ed from NY Times:
April 7, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
How the Internet Got Its Rules
By STEPHEN D. CROCKER
Bethesda, Md.

TODAY is an important date in the history of the Internet: the 40th anniversary of what is known as the Request for Comments. Outside the technical community, not many people know about the R.F.C.’s, but these humble documents shape the Internet’s inner workings and have played a significant role in its success.

When the R.F.C.’s were born, there wasn’t a World Wide Web. Even by the end of 1969, there was just a rudimentary network linking four computers at four research centers: the University of California, Los Angeles; the Stanford Research Institute; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The government financed the network and the hundred or fewer computer scientists who used it. It was such a small community that we all got to know one another.

A great deal of deliberation and planning had gone into the network’s underlying technology, but no one had given a lot of thought to what we would actually do with it. So, in August 1968, a handful of graduate students and staff members from the four sites began meeting intermittently, in person, to try to figure it out. (I was lucky enough to be one of the U.C.L.A. students included in these wide-ranging discussions.) It wasn’t until the next spring that we realized we should start writing down our thoughts. We thought maybe we’d put together a few temporary, informal memos on network protocols, the rules by which computers exchange information. I offered to organize our early notes.

What was supposed to be a simple chore turned out to be a nerve-racking project. Our intent was only to encourage others to chime in, but I worried we might sound as though we were making official decisions or asserting authority. In my mind, I was inciting the wrath of some prestigious professor at some phantom East Coast establishment. I was actually losing sleep over the whole thing, and when I finally tackled my first memo, which dealt with basic communication between two computers, it was in the wee hours of the morning. I had to work in a bathroom so as not to disturb the friends I was staying with, who were all asleep.

Still fearful of sounding presumptuous, I labeled the note a “Request for Comments.â€

DOING SOME LIKE THIS WAS DRAW MANY PROTESTS AS OUR FREEDOM OF SPEECH WILL BE COMPROMISED.


I DON'T THINK THEY WOULD VOTE FOR IT.

I thought Al Gore invented the internet. Or was it global warming that he invented, or carbon credits? Damn, now I am confused.