Milton Mueller: U.S. unilateral control of ICANN backfired last week

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: October 3, 2005 3:52:44 PM EDT
To: politech () politechbot com
Subject: [Politech] Milton Mueller: U.S. unilateral control of ICANN  
backfired last week



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: US unilateral control of ICANN backfires in WSIS.
Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2005 15:50:26 -0400
From: Milton Mueller <Mueller () syr edu>
To: <declan () well com>
CC: <farber () cis upenn edu>, <dave () farber net>


The results of WSIS Prepcom 3 demonstrate the failure of US  
unilateralism. The US is well on its way toward being isolated,  
having lost the support of the European Union in its attempt to keep  
ICANN and Internet governance under its own control. Now its rigid,  
defensive policy has put the Internet itself at risk.

The politics in Geneva were driven by an alliance between the  
European Union, states critical of ICANN such as Brazil, and  
authoritarian states such as China, Iran and Pakistan. All agreed to  
create an "Inter-Governmental Council for global public policy and  
oversight of Internet governance." Unlike ICANN, this Council would  
exclude civil society and the private sector from participating in  
policy making. It would set up a top-down, regulatory relationship  
between a governmental Council and the people who actually produce  
and use the Internet. As we have learned from the past two years,  
most governments have little interest in solving the real problems of  
the Internet. They prefer to play political games: asserting  
"national sovereignty" over a global communication medium, censoring  
inconvenient sources of information, thinking of ways to protect  
national telecom monopolies from internet-driven competition,  
grabbing control of country names in the domain name space, excluding  
Taiwan, and so on.

The US government and ICANN have resisted inter-governmental  
oversight, contending that intergovernmental supervision can be  
politically unstable and dangerous to the Internet's autonomy. But  
the US still seems not to understand how its own insistence on  
unilateral oversight creates the same instability.

When the US criticizes governmental control, the obvious retort is  
that there is already one government with extensive oversight powers  
over ICANN and the core technical functions of the Internet: the USA  
itself. The US is completely at a loss to explain why it should have  
that control, to the exclusion of all other governments. Its "but we  
are different" argument might find a receptive audience among US  
business interests, but it doesn't fly anywhere else. It's not enough  
for the US to say, "we are not an authoritarian state like China."  
For one thing, the US seems an increasingly authoritarian state to  
many in Europe, what with the Patriot Act and other recent measures  
forcing everyone entering the country to undergo biometric  
surveillance. But even if that is not an entirely fair perception,  
the US cannot claim that it will not use its unilateral power over  
ICANN * for it already has. In August, the Bush administration  
responded to political pressure from conservative religious groups by  
asking ICANN to reconsider the creation of a top level domain for  
adult content. It was inevitable and entirely predictable that other  
governments, including erstwhile allies such as the European Union,  
would want their own piece of that power.

The US could have, and should have, privatized and internationalized  
its oversight authority when it had a chance. It could have, and  
should have, insisted on robust, democratic accountability mechanisms  
for ICANN that would have pre-empted demands for centralized, old- 
style inter-governmental oversight. It could have, and should have,  
insisted on negotiating binding international agreements protecting  
the Internet from arbitrary governmental interference and regulation.  
But it didn't. And now the debate has devolved to a choice between  
"US control" versus "UN control." If that is the choice, it is only a  
matter of time before collective international control wins.

What seems to have been lost in the shuffle is the idea of  
distributed, cooperative control that involves individuals, technical  
and academic groups, Internet businesses and limited, lawful  
interactions with governments. The idea that nation-states should not  
have the ability to arbitrarily intervene in the Internet's operation  
whenever they feel like it, but should be bound by clear, negotiated  
constitutional principles, has been crowded out of the debate.

As the WSIS debate spills into the US media, do not permit the US  
government to wrap itself up in the flag of Internet freedom. It is  
reaping what it sowed. Its own special, extra-legal authority over  
ICANN and the Internet has been the lightning rod for politicization.  
Its insistence on retaining control, and the spillover from its  
unilateralism in other areas such as the war in Iraq, has done  
tremendous damage to its credibility. Now the Internet is paying the  
price.



Dr. Milton Mueller
Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://www.digital-convergence.org
http://www.internetgovernance.org


_______________________________________________
Politech mailing list
Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)


-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/