Who will govern the www domain?
By Asghar Javed The News On Sunday| Date not given http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/may2004-weekly/nos-16-05-2004/pol1.htm#2 (With the widespread realisation of the Internet's economic potential, the debate about administering its technical architecture has been reframed as a question of economic authority) The Internet that began as a non-profit experiment for academic research has become an economic engine for countries, businesses and individuals across the world, a global cultural network and an international communications hub. With unprecedented growth of economic interests online, the regulating structure of the Internet has become an inflection point. Governments, industry stakeholders and even end-users are debating about who should regulate the affairs of the Internet? This in itself is a reflection of how governments are beginning to awaken to the importance of the Internet to their economic interests. Not parallel but closely related to traditional economies, the Internet is a complete economic system consisting of ubiquitous, low-priced communication networks using Internet standards, applications and human capital that enable business to be executed over this network, interconnected electronic markets that operate over the network and applications infrastructure, and producers and intermediaries providing a variety of digital products and services to facilitate market efficiency and liquidity. Traditionally, the Internet has been perceived as a liberal medium; state or any other central regulation over it is considered a threat to free flow of information. But at some level, even those most wary of formal governance for the Internet acknowledge the need for central administration of some of the Internet's technical aspects like assignment of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that so far is being co-ordinated by the Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers--the only visible Internet regulating body known widely as ICANN. The issue of the Internet governance came to the limelight during the fist phase of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) on 10-12 December 2003, when leaders from over 200 nations had gathered. Some countries (China, South Africa, India and Brazil), fearing American control, had proposed the control to be shifted to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a United Nations agency that manages telephone numbers and telegraph, radio and TV wavelengths across the world. Unites States and some other countries were opposed to the idea of handing over responsibility to ITU on the pretext that this could give more power to governments and politicise technical decisions, which could affect the development of the Internet. A showdown on the issue was averted when conference leaders agreed to convene a panel of experts to study the issue and deliver draft recommendations during second phase of WSIS to be held in Tunis in 2005. There are not many alternatives so far. China has already started considering having parallel system. Sonia Arrison, director Centre for Technology Studies at the Pacific Research Institute in an answer to my email query said, "If the systems were opened up to the market place, then it would be preferable for ICANN to whither away." What makes the debate of regulating the Internet engaging and controversial at this point in time is that the division between technical co-ordination and public policymaking in practice at ICANN is much less clear than in theory. The blurring of this division has created an opportunity for broad reflection on what kind of authority and decision making processes there should be in cyberspace. What if the United States removes from central databases the domain names for countries considered sponsors of terrorism or those opposed to other American political, economic and strategic interests, essentially kicking them offline? Or firms in the developing countries get ripped off of their indigenous knowledge by big companies in the West on grounds of copyrights? A recent lawsuit by VeriSign, "complaining that it has been repeatedly thwarted (by ICANN) in trying to make money off its rights to run the master .com and .net database" is one case in point. On one hand, the lawsuit is a clear-cut business dispute between two powerful groups, one for profit and the other not authority. And on the other, it represents the first outbreak of hostilities that might have serious implication on how the Internet develops in future. Earlier, only grassroots organisations have been objecting to ICANN's decision to implement heavy application fee on the entities that wished to be the registrar for a new top-level domain. The lawsuit has given the debate on Internet governance a new focus. "The intentions become clear if one closely analyses the new polarisation; those who favour Internet control with ICANN against those who want it with more representative body," says IT analyst Athar Abbas. "Internet economy is still in its infancy here, and we have unresolved issues; very complicated." Does it sound like North West divide of the past? Let us take a peek at the history of ICANN authority over the Internet to better understand the issue. In 1958, the Unites States Government began funding a research project called ARPANET that has now evolved into the Internet. The Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency established and managed this project until the 1980s and maintained a list of the documents produced by researchers working on ARPANET and co-ordinated the Request for Comment process--functions collectively known as the Internet Assigned Names Authority. By 1992, the National Science Foundation assumed responsibility for co-ordinating and funding the management of the non-military part of the Internet infrastructure. Later, the Foundation made Network Solutions Inc responsible to maintain the authoritative database of the Internet registries and to register domain names in the key top-level domains--.com, .org, and .net TLDs--uniqueness that allows computers to find each other in cyberspace. As the Internet grew more commercial and more global, the US monopoly status came in question and the Internet community began debating the regulation of the medium. The controversy led to creation of ICANN in November 1998. ICANN's mission is to administer the allocation of the IP address space and to manage the domain name system and the root server system functions. With the formation of ICANN and the widespread realisation of the economic potential of the Internet, the debate about administering its technical architecture has been reframed as a question of economic authority. The developing nations with weak economies by default have an unresolved issue at hand. Unless at least this issue is addressed in the second phase of WSIS in 2005, they should be ready for a new economic order. ------------------------ Yahoo! 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