Washington –
The United States and 170 other countries reached agreement
on future management of the Internet on the eve of the United
Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society
(WSIS) in Tunis, Tunisia, November 16-18.
The November 15 agreement “reaffirms
the importance of technology and particularly the Internet
to the world” and “preserves the unique role
of the United States government in assuring the reliability
and stability of the Internet,” said Ambassador David
Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications
and information policy at the State Department and chief
U.S. negotiator at WSIS.
“[The agreement] took no action with
regard to existing institutions including ICANN [Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers] and others.
It created no new international organizations,” said
Gross at a Tunis press briefing held after the agreement
was adopted.
WSIS originally was convened in 2003 to
narrow the "digital divide" -- the gap between
information haves and have-nots. However, in advance of
the Tunis summit, talks and media attention focused heavily
on a disagreement among nations over Internet governance
and the oversight of the main computers that control traffic
on the Internet.
In September, the European Union recommended
a new framework for international cooperation that would
see the creation of a new, multiparty “forum”
to develop public policy, and international governance of
the Internet through ICANN, a nonprofit company in California
responsible for carrying out the technical management of
the domain name and addressing system (DNS). (See related
article.)
Countries such as Iran, Venezuela, Cuba
and Saudi Arabia had sought U.N. oversight of ICANN and
Internet governance, but the United States firmly opposed
that suggestion, maintaining that the innovation and creativity
of the Internet should not be impeded by a bureaucratic
governing structure.
The agreement is consistent with a November
15 U.S. House of Representatives resolution calling for
ICANN to remain in its present state with no additional
oversight.
Gross said the United States is “very
pleased” over the definition of Internet governance
in the agreement, saying it focuses less on “some
of the technical aspects” and more on a broad range
of issues including spam (unwanted e-mail), cybercrime and
security-related issues.
“And also very, very importantly,
it focuses and refocuses and reaffirms the importance of
the free flow of information, reaffirms the importance of
technology for facilitating that and for the positive economic,
social and political developments that can occur from that,”
said Gross.
EXPANDING THE INTERNET
U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce Michael
Gallagher said the agreement means the world will leave
the day-to-day management of the Internet to the private
sector through ICANN. He said the onus now is on the world
to expand the Internet to the benefit of developing countries.
“The key here is to get countries
around the world, but particularly in the developing world,
to adopt and ingrain the use of technology to help better
their economies, jobs, economic opportunities,” Gallagher
said.
The agreement also will create the Internet
Governance Forum (IGF) in spring 2006.
The forum is intended to provide “an
opportunity for civil society and the private sector to
engage with governments on an equal footing in ways that
are very unusual, particularly in the U.N. family,”
said Gross.
“We hope this will be a springboard
for a lot of progress to be made with regard to implementations
of the sorts of things that were discussed both in the Geneva
phase [in 2003] and also here in the Tunis phase documents,”
he said.
According to the November 15 agreement,
the IGF would have “no oversight function and would
not replace existing arrangements, mechanisms, institutions
or organizations, but would involve them and take advantage
of their expertise. It would be constituted as a neutral,
nonduplicative and nonbinding process. It would have no
involvement in day-to-day or technical operations of the
Internet.”
The full
texts of documents presented at the Tunis summit are
available on the organization’s Web site.
Tim Receveur
Washington File Staff Writer
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