UN contemplates taking over internet - no kidding:
U.N. Summit to Focus on Internet
Officials to Discuss Shifting of Control to International Body
By David McGuire
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page E05
Leaders from almost 200 countries will convene next week in Geneva to discuss whether an international body such as the United Nations should be in charge of running the Internet, which would be a dramatic departure from the current system, managed largely by U.S. interests.
The representatives, including the heads of state of France, Germany and more than 50 other countries, are expected to attend the World Summit on the Information Society, which also is to analyze the way that Web site and e-mail addresses are doled out, how online disputes are resolved and the thorny question of how to tax Internet-based transactions.
Many developing nations complain that the world's most visible Internet governance body -- the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) -- does not adequately represent their interests and should be scrapped in favor of a group allied with the United Nations.
A nonprofit company based in Marina del Rey, Calif., ICANN oversees the Internet's addressing system under an agreement with the U.S. government. The U.S. private sector controls about 85 percent of the Internet's underlying infrastructure.
"Because this is taking place in a U.N. summit, the commercial sector is not yet fully aware of the implications this has for the Internet," said Marilyn S. Cade, director of Internet and e-commerce, law and government affairs at AT&T Corp.
Companies such as AT&T say the Internet has benefited from ICANN's ability to set policies and resolve disputes quickly with minimal government oversight, but some countries complain that the United States wields too much control over ICANN and that the body is unresponsive to their needs.
"That sentiment is very much out there . . . and although [ICANN] has evolved and has tried to bring in a lot of engagement from a lot of places, there have to be ways to open up the process even a little bit more," said Sarbuland Khan, head of the United Nations' Information and Communications Technology Task Force.
Khan said world governments, for instance, have no central authority to coordinate rules for Internet security and taxing online transactions.
He added that the United Nations is not trying to transfer ICANN's powers to its own International Telecommunications Union (ITU), as some countries have advocated, but he conceded that such recommendations would be on the table in Geneva.
ICANN Chairman Vinton G. Cerf said the group has been unfairly made the focal point of all criticism relating to Internet administration, even in areas where it was never intended to have a say.
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