Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Should the United Nations run the Internet?

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 13:15:59 -0500

Should the United Nations run the Internet?

By Declan McCullagh
http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5181327.html

Story last modified March 30, 2004, 4:00 AM PST

The United Nations wants to expand its influence over the Internet, but 
would it be wise to let that happen?

That question follows the conclusion of a two-day U.N. summit last week,
in 
which delegates from sundry countries such as Cuba, Ghana, Bolivia and 
Venezula lectured North American, Asian and European countries about how 
best to run the Internet.

Their demands varied, but the bottom line was the same: They want a
piece 
of the action in just about every way. The event's agenda was 
breathtakingly broad, taking in everything from spam and privacy to 
intellectual property, network security and the operation of root domain 
name servers.

Juan Fernandez, the delegate from Cuba's Ministry of Informatics and 
Communications, no doubt was sincere in the speeches he delivered at the 
summit.
The United Nations makes ICANN look like a paragon of political
perfection. 	
Less clear is why a nation that tolerates only one political party and
last 
year imprisoned some 80 journalists and peaceful democracy activists
should 
be a model for enlightened thinking about how to preserve an open and 
democratic Internet.

Iran was also among the delegates hoping to inject the United Nations
into 
the process of overseeing Internet protocols, domain names and network 
stability. Before taking these folks too seriously, though, let's recall 
that Iran ranks in the bottom few percent of the 2004 Index of Economic 
Freedom, bans more than 10,000 "immoral" Web sites and jailed Iranian 
journalist and Web logger Sina Motallebi last year.

All this raises the question whether these are nations that should
decide 
the rules for a worldwide Internet.

It is true that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers 
(ICANN), which currently oversees address space and domain names, has
its 
problems. It has moved with the speed of a crippled, three-toed sloth in 
approving new top-level domains. It is a little too cozy with large 
trademark holders. It needs to be more completely weaned from the U.S. 
government.

Developing nations have other legitimate gripes, too. China has been 
allocated about 45 million global Internet addresses, less than the 
combined total of Stanford University and IBM. That's hardly reasonable 
nowadays. But groups like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
have 
been working hard on Internet Protocol version 6, the next-generation 
Internet protocol that will eliminate the shortage of addresses.

It is hardly clear that the United Nations would do a better job, and
there 
are plenty of reasons to believe that it wouldn't.

The United Nations is home to the world's most bloated bureaucracy, 
employing more than 56,000 people at salaries roughly twice what they
would 
be paid in the private sector. It refuses to subject itself to
independent 
audits of its finances and does not even publish an annual financial
report.
Demands for greater U.N. involvement in the Internet are not new. 	
What's more, the General Assembly, which had 191 members as of December 
2002, has grown estranged from the United States in recent years and is 
hardly a place for enlightened political discourse.

Yet, the United Nations makes ICANN look like a paragon of political 
perfection. ICANN posts reasonably complete financial information
online, 
broadcasts its board meetings over the Internet and permits the general 
public to attend its meetings at no cost. By contrast, writes Ted 
Carpenter, author of "Delusions of Grandeur: The United Nations and
Global 
Intervention": "Most U.N. members are ruled by authoritarian regimes
that 
rarely even make the pretense of being democratic, and the culture of 
governance at the United Nations itself is hardly sympathetic to the
values 
of individual rights and tethered government."

Demands for greater U.N. involvement in the Internet are not new. As far 
back as 1999, a U.N. agency proposed taxing all e-mail messages to pay
for 
development aid. The United Nations hastily backed away from that
proposal, 
however, after prominent members of the U.S. Congress correctly slammed
the 
organization as a "bureaucracy looking to get its greedy mitts on the 
Internet through new taxes."

While the politics of last week's summit was difficult to decipher and
was 
cloaked in the argot of U.N. bureaucratese, the delegates fortunately 
didn't seem to be able to agree on specifics.

In a statement, the United Nations seemed to acknowledge this temporary 
setback, saying it hopes to "better coordinate the work of specialized 
bodies" like ICANN, the IETF, the Internet Architecture Board and the
World 
Wide Web Consortium, and to "ensure the involvement of all 
stakeholders"--rather than invent a new organization to supplant them.

The next step is for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to create a
"working 
group on Internet governance" that will make specific recommendations in 
time for a summit in November 2005.

It is highly symbolic that the United Nations' climactic summit next
year 
will meet in Tunisia, a state that blocks access to many Web sites,
spies 
on its citizens' e-mail and closely controls Internet service providers. 
The group Reporters Without Borders calls Tunisian president Zine 
el-Abidine Ben Ali a "predator of press freedom" and claims that he
allowed 
Zouhair Yahyaoui, editor of news site TUNeZINE, to be arrested and
tortured.

At next year's event, I'm sure that Tunisian politicians will be happy
to 
share their experiences in how a free and open Internet should be run.

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