By Andy Sullivan
The United States is headed for a showdown with much of the rest of
the world over control of the Internet. President Bush says he doesn't
care.
Countries like China, Brazil and Iran don't like the fact that the
world's only superpower oversees the system that guides traffic across
the global computer network, and have pushed for an international body
to take over that role.
The United States believes such a body would slow the pace of online
innovation to a crawl, requiring entrepreneurs to win permission from
a cumbersome bureaucracy before introducing services like Internet
telephony.
"It would be akin to having more than 100 drivers of a single
bus. Right now we have a driver, and the driver's been doing a good
job," said Assistant Commerce Secretary Michael Gallagher, the
U.S. official who oversees the domain-name system.
Much of the business and technical community that actually runs the
Internet agrees with Gallagher. But those groups will be relegated to
the sidelines and the United States will find few allies among other
governments at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis,
Tunisia next week.
"Materially there's nothing wrong with the current structure. But
formally it is strange that something with such a global impact is
being controlled by one nation, and there is a sharpened position
against the United States' unilateral thinking," Dutch Minister of
Economic Affairs Laurens Jan Brinkhorst said in an interview.
If unresolved, the clash could lead to a split in the domain-name
system, and Internet users wouldn't necessarily reach the same Web
site when they type an address like "www.reuters.com" into their
browsers.
Experts say that's unlikely as it would destroy the consensus on which
the Internet is built, but few expect the issue will be resolved at
the United Nations-sponsored event.
The head of the U.S. delegation said the dispute has distracted
attention from the summit's original focus on bringing advanced
communications to the developing world.
"As far as I can tell, these discussions about Internet governance
won't put one more computer or one more cell phone or one more
anything into the hands of somebody who doesn't have it in Africa,
Asia, South America or elsewhere," Ambassador David Gross said in an
interview.
GOOGLE-POWER
Others point out that search engines are gradually making the
domain-name system irrelevant.
"This is such a sideshow debate," said Oxford University professor
Jonathan Zittrain. "If you couldn't find IBM at ibm.com, what would
you do? You would Google it, and there you'd be."
The dispute revolves around a simple list stored in thousands of
domain-name servers around the globe.
That list, known as the "root zone file," serves as a master telephone
book for the Internet's 259 "top level" domains -- those portions of
the domain name that appear behind the final dot, such as ".com,"
".org" or the United Kingdom's ."uk."
The list only changes when a California nonprofit body called the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, adds
new top-level domains or redelegates the ones that exist. ICANN can't
make any changes without the approval of the U.S. Department of
Commerce.
Some countries worry that the United States could use this system to
effectively "unplug" a nation from the Internet by redirecting its
country code. Experts say that would be difficult to pull off because
it would require thousands of computer administrators across the globe
to cooperate.
Gallagher says the United States has kept politics out of the root
since it set up ICANN in 1998. But in August he asked ICANN to
postpone work on a .xxx domain for sex sites after conservative groups
urged the Commerce Department to block it.
"Nothing would have happened unless the U.S. government sent that
letter," said Syracuse University professor Milton Mueller, who chairs
ICANN's noncommercial users group.
Business and technical experts say the United States would have been
better off expressing its concerns through ICANN's government
committee rather than taking a stand on its own.
Gallagher said he sent the letter to express concerns in as
transparent a manner as possible and avoid charges of backroom
manipulation.
"(When) other countries have done it, it's not a foul. For some reason
when the U.S. does it it's a foul," he said.
Though the United States does not plan to give up control of the
domain-name system, the summit may lead to other changes.
The United States has said it's willing to give other countries more
direct control over their own country codes, and ICANN is exploring
ways to improve the relationship with its governments committee.
Participants may also agree to set up a forum to discuss cross-border
issues like spam and cybercrime.
"I think the U.S. realizes in some way that they're picking fights
they don't need to have," Mueller said.
(Additional reporting by Lucas van Grinsven in Amsterdam)
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.
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[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It seems to me that the USA is being
sort of high and mighty on this matter. Just as the USA pays little or
no attention to what other countries want or do with their two-letter
TLDs such as .uk, .gr, and others, why would they now start worrying
about what a UN-controlled body said regards (for example) China being
the controller or Germany or UK? Wouldn't we still continue to do as
we pleased anyway? PAT]
Andy Sullivan (