The Battle for the Internet
Richard Wray of the Guardian writes that the EU says internet could fall apart unless the US yields control of the Internet to the United Nations. "The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the Internet will split apart."
It (the Internet) is managed by the California-based, not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) under contract to the US department of commerce. A meeting of officials in Geneva last month was meant to formulate a way of sharing internet governance which politicians could unveil at the UN-sponsored World Summit ...
Viviane Reding, European IT commissioner, says that if a multilateral approach cannot be agreed, countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and some Arab states could start operating their own versions of the internet and the ubiquity that has made it such a success will disappear. ...
The EU plan was applauded by states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, leading the former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt to express misgivings on his weblog: "It seems as if the European position has been hijacked by officials that have been driven by interests that should not be ours."
The EU proposes to "share" power over the domain name servers (DNS) which lie at the root of the system with "developing" nations. The DNS allows any address to be uniquely resolved. Controlling the root servers makes it possible to add or conceal whole branches of the Internet tree. By refusing to allow a UN approved body to "share" power over DNS, the US has been accused of hijacking the Internet. The New Scientist writes:
Currently, only the US can make changes to that master file. And that has some WGIG (UN's Working Group on Internet Governance) members very worried indeed. "It's about who has ultimate authority," says Kummer. "In theory, the US could decide to delete a country from the master root server. Some people expect this to happen one day, even though the US has never abused its position in that way."
It is precisely because the US "has never abused its position in that way" that the Internet has become so universally accepted. It is on the basis of that "full faith and confidence" in the system that vast information flows, often transacted by companies worth many billions of dollars, can occur on a routine basis. By maintaining this medium of exchange, the United States has become the information central banker to the world. The WGIG's essentially argues that the United States might be tempted to debase the Internet in order to control it. However, a moment's reflection will convince most readers that any American attempt to behave as the WGIG's members (like Saudi Arabia and Iran) would probably be tempted to behave would instantly lead to the end of the US monopoly. The New Scientist's claim that the Internet has become too valuable to entrust it to the United States stands the logic on its head. The Internet has become too valuable, even to American companies alone, for anyone to even think of monkeying with it. Anyone that is, except the WGIG.
Viviane Reding's warning is as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny. China, Saudi Arabia and Iran can go ahead with their threat to create a proprietary DNS system and govern the hell out of it, which will guarantee that it will never achieve universal acceptance. All the United States need do to maintain its control over the Internet is simply to leave it alone.