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 Analysis of WSIS Outcomes for Internet Governance
posted by Mueller on Thursday November 24 2005, @06:30PM
Hans writes "An Assessment of the WSIS-2/Tunis ‘05 Outcomes
The outcomes of the Tunis World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) are significant -- and rather surprising. ICANN emerges from the summit both unchanged and significantly different. After WSIS it has a stronger claim to legitimacy.
ICANN emerged unchanged, in that its institutional structures – most notably its mechanisms for political oversight – were not amended. ICANN continues to operate under the formal authority of a single government, the US. Such a unilateral globalization model is a novel arrangement, quite unlike what is used in other global sectors (e.g. telephony or communication satellites.) The US continues to exercise a kind of unipolar authority it does not have in physical space.
But ICANN also emerges from WSIS radically different: it is now endowed with a greater degree of legitimacy. Over a period of four years the UN family of nations intensely scrutinized ICANN, Internet governance, and unilateral US oversight, and they came to a decision: they declined to change ICANN’s structures. Whereas US control was previously the product of a unilateral assertion, it is now the outcome of a lengthy process of scrutiny by all nations.
Full document here or at www.IP3.gatech.edu
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Analysis of WSIS Outcomes for Internet Governance
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The UN was unable to prevent the U.S. from invading Iraq. Does that mean that the world has legitimized the war in Iraq? No, it just means that the U.S. has the power to do what it wants, regardless of what most other nations think.
Analogously, it seems incorrect to me to say that the world's governments "declined to change ICANN's structures." It would be far more accurate to say that they were unable to change them without US agreement. Since the U.S. would not agree, ICANN remained unchanged. I fail to see how retaining the support of the US - which ICANN already had - signals any change in the level of ICANN's global support.
The world's governments remain intensely critical of U.S. unilateral control over ICANN, and suspicious or jealous of ICANN's power to make public policy. Those concerns are reflected in the WSIS Agenda, in paragraphs 63, and 68-71. As I have written elsewhere, in leaving the status quo in place, WSIS failed to resolve any major controversies.
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Thanks for showing us all very clearly how thoughtful, well-informed and considerate of other people are the defenders of U.S. unilateral control.
Here's a few facts for your edification:
1. All of those countries you hate are already inside ICANN as part of GAC. Chew on that for a while
2. No one is talking about turning over "the Internet" to the UN, and indeed, if you think the US "runs the Internet" and that it shouldn't "give it up" then you don't understand a thing about how the Internet works.
3. The Internet was never a "weapon." It was conceived as a protocol for tying together different physical networks.
4. The Internet gets its value by means of network externalities, so regardless of who invented the protocol (and it wasn't you, was it?) the importance and value of the internet comes from people joining that network globally. Networks in Europe, Asia, etc. have made investments in infrastructure and add as much value to the internet as U.S. companies and organizations.
5. I don't see how it helps the Internet or me as a U.S. citizens for a bureacrat in the Dept. of Commerce to have some unaccountable and arbitrary power over changes in the root zone file. Perhaps you can explain that, assuming that you know what the root zone file is.
6. The U.S. government, when it comes down to it, has more in common with other governments than it does with ordinary citizens and internet users.
7. The WWW protocol, which is what made the Internet easy enough for simpletons like you to use, was not invented here but by a Swiss institute.
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