There are today 1.5 billion internet users worldwide. To all of them, the internet has brought global freedom to communicate and to exchange opinions and ideas. The internet still holds breathtaking opportunities for our civilisation: from omnipresent access to education and healthcare to better government policies through participative democracy. Much of the progress and creativity achieved in recent years has been the fruit of human ingenuity unleashed by the internet's openness to innovation.But to continue reaping the benefits of the online world, the internet must evolve on a solid and democratic base. Have you ever asked yourself who actually is in charge of ensuring that millions of computers can connect to each other 24 hours a day? And who decides on new top level domains in addition to the existing ones, such as ".com", ".fr", ".de" or ".eu", we can have? Who decides on the price that domain name registries and end-users should pay for new domain names? Who, in the last instance, guarantees the stability and openness of the internet for users in the whole world?
Today the main player in all those decisions is ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is also entrusted with the IANA functions managing the root of the internet, the Internet's core directory.
What is ICANN? ICANN is a private not-for profit corporation established in California. Since it was created more than 10 years ago, ICANN has been working under an agreement with the US Department of Commerce. At the moment, the US Government is the only body exercising some oversight over ICANN. I believe that the US, so far, done this in a reasonable manner.
Read the embedded PDF below and watch the video to understand the significance of ICANN and about how it ought to be governed.
The Future of Internet Governance- Towards an Accountable ICANN by Viviane Reding
My comments as an individual: To progress from G1 to G12 appears to be a good idea. Commissioner Viviane Reding proposes G12 as "an informal group of government representatives that meets at least twice a year and can make, by majority, recommendations to ICANN where appropriate. To be geographically balanced, this "G-12 for Internet Governance" should include two representatives from each 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 could be given observer status.
The idea is that "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". At the same time, the accountability of ICANN due to its "unique position of a global quasi-monopoly... requires global management... [as] monopolies always involve the risk of abuse. And who should ICANN be accountable to? Not the UN, because "decisions on internet governance need to be taken swiftly".
So a G 12.
The G12 for Internet Governance differs from a NATO or OPEC, as it is "informal" and "geographically balanced" with the inclusion of the ICANN chairman as a "non-voting" member with "observer" status granted to International Organizations.
Good progress. But a move by Governments to take over the Internet? Why voting status to the Government 12 and observer status to the International Organizations? I would, in my independent opinion prefer an I 12 for Internet Governance with the twelve governments as Observers....
Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
(individual views)
..
No comments:
Post a Comment