Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Internet Governance: The battle lines are drawn
By Steven Lang and Guy Berger (Highway Africa News Agency)
MARRAKECH - Who should run the Internet? A key battle in this drawn-out war for control of the Internet commenced in Geneva today (23 November) with a UN team kicked off the first of several sessions dealing with Internet governance. Meanwhile, in Marrakech, a taste of the issues was raised at a conference on the role of the media in the information society.
The outcome will ultimately determine the future of the Internet.
The UN working group was set up in terms of a mandate from Secretary General, Kofi Annan, following failed attempts at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva to satisfactorily resolve this issue. Delegates meeting through three prepcoms and various ‘inter-sessionary’ debates in 2002 and 2003 never came close to agreeing on who should decide what about the Internet.
The WSIS Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action – the two key documents adopted by world leaders at the Geneva Summit in December 2003 - deal with Internet governance in broad, almost ideological terms. They recognize that the topic has two key, inter-dependent elements – that of technology and that of public policy.
The Declaration of Principles calls for Internet governance that is “transparent and democratic”, which also targets equity and broad access, and is “respectful of multilingualism.” The Plan of Action also encourages the creation of content in all languages, and it goes on to insist on “affordable global connectivity”.
It was relatively easy to agree on the noble objectives stated above, but divisions ripped through the meetings when trying to decide on who, or which organisation, should deliver on these. The only type of consensus achieved was that of pushing the issue on to the next phase of the two-phase summit.
Currently, a key part of the Internet is managed by the Internet Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a not-for-profit organisation originally set up in California under contract to the US Department of Commerce.
ICANN says it merely ensures that Internet addresses are registered and that it has nothing to do with what contents is transmitted through these. It adds that since it does the job rather well, it should retain this function. Some critics, however, believe ICANN is not as efficient as it could be – particularly as regards making a pro-active contribution to overcoming the digital divide.
More fundamental to opponents of ICANN, who are drawn mainly from developing countries, is that the organisation is still technically only answerable to the government of a single country - the US. There is always an implied threat to the sovereignty of the nation-state if a corporation constituted in another country has control over a critical resource. Critics say that as the Internet is an international asset, it should be controlled by an international body – preferably a body within the United Nations framework.
One international body already dealing with an area of Internet governance is the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), which regulates cybersquatting. This is when an opportunistic party is first to buy the name of a web address such as “SouthAfrica.com” which should arguably be owned by the country concerned, and a decision has to be made about who is entitled to the domain.
The UN Internet governance working group in Geneva is instructed to:
ü Develop a working definition of Internet governance.
ü Identify the public policy issues that are relevant to Internet governance.
ü Develop a common understanding of the respective roles and responsibilities of governments, existing inter-governmental and international organisations and other forums as well as the private sector and civil society from both developing and developed countries.
ü Prepare a report on the results of this activity to be presented for consideration and appropriate action for the second phase of WSIS in Tunis in 2005.
The fact that the team has taken 11 months to be set up, and that there is not yet consensus on a working definition of what “governance” will cover, does not bode well for those who expect a solution by the time leaders gather in Tunis next year.
The Internet is already over 30 years old, but it is only in the last five years that some governments have tried to assert a serious kind of control over it. At the Marrakech conference, Henrikas Yushkiavitshus, former Assistant Director General, Communication and Information of UNESCO, explained it this way, “The Internet developed so well because governments did not know what is happening – when they found out it was too late.”
However, a number of governments such as that in China have not been left behind, but are in fact using strict controls and filters to censor Internet connections that are accessible to their citizens.
Governments like Beijing, but even those of more democratic countries like South Africa, want to transfer control over the Internet to an international agency. Some have proposed the Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union (ITU) as a suitable replacement for ICANN. The ITU is already responsible for the regulation of international telephony, and since the Internet is based on telephone backbones.
It might appear to be a logical choice, but civil society critics warn that ITU is wholly government and company dominated, and this leaves out points of view coming from other constituencies, including the media.
There is already a problem in that ICANN recognises the right of unpopular governments to decide who can and cannot get a country-coded web address. An example is the Zimbabwean government which would have an interest in preventing the banned Daily News from publishing online – especially from a .zw address, but indeed from any other web address for that matter.
For their part, business people fear – with some justification - that a move of domain name regulation from ICANN to the ITU could lead to inefficiencies in how the Internet is managed.
A strong lobby from diverse sectors, including ICANN, argues that more important than the questions around Internet addresses are the content issues. ICANN has steadfastly rejected any suggestion that it should be held responsible for or even monitor what type of material is carried over the Internet. The question then is whether any other body should do so.
Most freedom of expression advocates agree that there should be some kind of control to prevent child pornography and hate speech, and oppose the view of many governments that all types of pornography should be stopped. The “hands-off-the-Internet” people also argue that governments already have national laws in place that deal with the morality of content, and that they should use that legislation, rather than setting up new and global regulations for all societies.
Media freedom lobbyists also fear that once some kind of censorship is broadly accepted, governments would use such provisions to block any kind of material, especially criticisms of the government in question.
An umbrella group of media NGOs issued a statement at the Marrakech conference saying that “governance” should not be allowed to become a code word for government regulation of Internet content. The statement went on to say that two years of blocked negotiations at the WSIS “demonstrated that authoritarian governments which already censor their own Internet traffic, seek controls internationally and/or legitimization of such controls nationally.”
However, a degree of Internet censorship has already been legitimised in limitations in the WSIS documents agreed by governments in Geneva. This is through provisions that media freedom should not clash with national laws and that journalism should be “responsible”.
The Marrakech meeting has no authority as regards the Geneva task team’s work, and even the WSIS in Tunisia will not necessarily be able to enforce a governance system on governments around the world. But whether the current system involving ICANN, WIP and national governments will continue is probably unlikely in the medium term.
By Steven Lang and Guy Berger (Highway Africa News Agency)
MARRAKECH - Who should run the Internet? A key battle in this drawn-out war for control of the Internet commenced in Geneva today (23 November) with a UN team kicked off the first of several sessions dealing with Internet governance. Meanwhile, in Marrakech, a taste of the issues was raised at a conference on the role of the media in the information society.
The outcome will ultimately determine the future of the Internet.
The UN working group was set up in terms of a mandate from Secretary General, Kofi Annan, following failed attempts at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva to satisfactorily resolve this issue. Delegates meeting through three prepcoms and various ‘inter-sessionary’ debates in 2002 and 2003 never came close to agreeing on who should decide what about the Internet.
The WSIS Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action – the two key documents adopted by world leaders at the Geneva Summit in December 2003 - deal with Internet governance in broad, almost ideological terms. They recognize that the topic has two key, inter-dependent elements – that of technology and that of public policy.
The Declaration of Principles calls for Internet governance that is “transparent and democratic”, which also targets equity and broad access, and is “respectful of multilingualism.” The Plan of Action also encourages the creation of content in all languages, and it goes on to insist on “affordable global connectivity”.
It was relatively easy to agree on the noble objectives stated above, but divisions ripped through the meetings when trying to decide on who, or which organisation, should deliver on these. The only type of consensus achieved was that of pushing the issue on to the next phase of the two-phase summit.
Currently, a key part of the Internet is managed by the Internet Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a not-for-profit organisation originally set up in California under contract to the US Department of Commerce.
ICANN says it merely ensures that Internet addresses are registered and that it has nothing to do with what contents is transmitted through these. It adds that since it does the job rather well, it should retain this function. Some critics, however, believe ICANN is not as efficient as it could be – particularly as regards making a pro-active contribution to overcoming the digital divide.
More fundamental to opponents of ICANN, who are drawn mainly from developing countries, is that the organisation is still technically only answerable to the government of a single country - the US. There is always an implied threat to the sovereignty of the nation-state if a corporation constituted in another country has control over a critical resource. Critics say that as the Internet is an international asset, it should be controlled by an international body – preferably a body within the United Nations framework.
One international body already dealing with an area of Internet governance is the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), which regulates cybersquatting. This is when an opportunistic party is first to buy the name of a web address such as “SouthAfrica.com” which should arguably be owned by the country concerned, and a decision has to be made about who is entitled to the domain.
The UN Internet governance working group in Geneva is instructed to:
ü Develop a working definition of Internet governance.
ü Identify the public policy issues that are relevant to Internet governance.
ü Develop a common understanding of the respective roles and responsibilities of governments, existing inter-governmental and international organisations and other forums as well as the private sector and civil society from both developing and developed countries.
ü Prepare a report on the results of this activity to be presented for consideration and appropriate action for the second phase of WSIS in Tunis in 2005.
The fact that the team has taken 11 months to be set up, and that there is not yet consensus on a working definition of what “governance” will cover, does not bode well for those who expect a solution by the time leaders gather in Tunis next year.
The Internet is already over 30 years old, but it is only in the last five years that some governments have tried to assert a serious kind of control over it. At the Marrakech conference, Henrikas Yushkiavitshus, former Assistant Director General, Communication and Information of UNESCO, explained it this way, “The Internet developed so well because governments did not know what is happening – when they found out it was too late.”
However, a number of governments such as that in China have not been left behind, but are in fact using strict controls and filters to censor Internet connections that are accessible to their citizens.
Governments like Beijing, but even those of more democratic countries like South Africa, want to transfer control over the Internet to an international agency. Some have proposed the Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union (ITU) as a suitable replacement for ICANN. The ITU is already responsible for the regulation of international telephony, and since the Internet is based on telephone backbones.
It might appear to be a logical choice, but civil society critics warn that ITU is wholly government and company dominated, and this leaves out points of view coming from other constituencies, including the media.
There is already a problem in that ICANN recognises the right of unpopular governments to decide who can and cannot get a country-coded web address. An example is the Zimbabwean government which would have an interest in preventing the banned Daily News from publishing online – especially from a .zw address, but indeed from any other web address for that matter.
For their part, business people fear – with some justification - that a move of domain name regulation from ICANN to the ITU could lead to inefficiencies in how the Internet is managed.
A strong lobby from diverse sectors, including ICANN, argues that more important than the questions around Internet addresses are the content issues. ICANN has steadfastly rejected any suggestion that it should be held responsible for or even monitor what type of material is carried over the Internet. The question then is whether any other body should do so.
Most freedom of expression advocates agree that there should be some kind of control to prevent child pornography and hate speech, and oppose the view of many governments that all types of pornography should be stopped. The “hands-off-the-Internet” people also argue that governments already have national laws in place that deal with the morality of content, and that they should use that legislation, rather than setting up new and global regulations for all societies.
Media freedom lobbyists also fear that once some kind of censorship is broadly accepted, governments would use such provisions to block any kind of material, especially criticisms of the government in question.
An umbrella group of media NGOs issued a statement at the Marrakech conference saying that “governance” should not be allowed to become a code word for government regulation of Internet content. The statement went on to say that two years of blocked negotiations at the WSIS “demonstrated that authoritarian governments which already censor their own Internet traffic, seek controls internationally and/or legitimization of such controls nationally.”
However, a degree of Internet censorship has already been legitimised in limitations in the WSIS documents agreed by governments in Geneva. This is through provisions that media freedom should not clash with national laws and that journalism should be “responsible”.
The Marrakech meeting has no authority as regards the Geneva task team’s work, and even the WSIS in Tunisia will not necessarily be able to enforce a governance system on governments around the world. But whether the current system involving ICANN, WIP and national governments will continue is probably unlikely in the medium term.
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