The debate on Internet governance has heated up and created a divide between the US, EU, and many other industrialised countries on the one hand, and Brazil, South Africa, China and numerous other countries from the South on the other. Why?
The group from the South had, prior WSIS in Genvea asked for more inclusion of governments and international organisations in Internet-related regulatory processes. They feared that the Internet is controlled by commercial (and American) interests instead of being considered as a "common", i.e. a global resource available and accessible to all. The US-led bloc, including Sweden, was however in favour of the current model where the private sector and civil society have a greater role and where ICANN (that is in charge of managing domain names and IP addresses) play a key role. The US-led group believes that the calls for reform of Internet governance mask a desire on the part of some governments to constrain its dynamic growth, control content, and limit users' freedom of expression. It also took the view that the system works reasonably well, so there is no need to change it. However, Internet filtering like Chinas government's "Golden Shield" of censorship, ICANN's creation of the .xxx domain, and the unilateral US-stand regarding the master domain servers, all raise questions as to whether or not the current system actually works. These examples also indicate that there is a lack of global cooperation and coordination for a truly effective Internet governance mechanism. Regards Gail Watt www.edemocracy.se _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
