Washington � The United States says that transferring control of the Internet to the United Nations would stifle innovation with excessive bureaucracy and may help repressive regimes curtail free expression online, according to the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy.
In a November 2 Internet chat, Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator, will preview an upcoming summit on Internet governance and discuss his views on why the very nature of the Internet as an innovative and dynamic medium is at stake.
The United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) will convene on November 16-18 in Tunis, Tunisia, to discuss the future of Internet governance and ways to bring the benefits of technology to the developing world.
The Internet has become "an extraordinary mechanism for freedom of expression. Each year, publications are available on the Internet; people are able to directly communicate with them, with each other, through the Internet," Gross said at a roundtable with journalists in Washington October 6.
The current system of Internet governance "is extraordinarily participatory," he said. "Not just by other governments, which all of whom already played an important role in this, but also by what's called civil society, by private enterprise, by a whole host of actors, by technical people, academics and the like," Goss said. (See related article and transcript.)
The U.S. government has maintained a consistent hands-off approach that has allowed the Internet to grow and develop without substantial restrictions.
Since 1998, a nonprofit organization named ICANN -- Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers -- has been responsible for managing and coordinating the Internet's domain names, according to ICANN.
ICANN’s role has been to facilitate and smooth the explosive growth of the Internet. Its president directs an international staff, working from three continents, who ensure that ICANN meets its operational commitment to the Internet community.
FEARS BUREAUCRATIC CONTROL WOULD STIFLE INNOVATION
Gross expressed concern over some other countries’ proposals for sharing or ceding private sector oversight of the Internet -- including what ICANN now does -- to the United Nations.
A recent European Union proposal, for example, outlined a new framework for international cooperation that would see the creation of a new, multistakeholder "forum" to develop public policy, and international government involvement in allocation of Internet Provider (IP) addressing systems.
"As we read the EU proposal, there will be a group of bureaucrats from countries around the world that will be able to restrict the innovation that the technical people in Italy, for example, currently bring to the Internet and their ability to be able to continue to innovate," Gross said. "We would like to see people -- whether it's in Italy, Russia, United States, around the world -- be free to continue to innovate and not have to seek permission or make sure that they structure what they do in a way that meets some predetermined outcome set by a bunch of international government bureaucrats.
"What the EU seems to propose is a top-down bureaucratic structure that was the way of the last century and that seems to us to be counterproductive because it stifles innovation, it stifles the very thing that's made the Internet as successful as it is," he said.
He also noted that support for the EU proposal, which was made at a preparatory conference (PrepCom-3) for the Tunis summit in September, was expressed by Cuba, Iran and China, among others. "These are not, I submit, the types of people who necessarily see eye to eye with us in terms of the importance of the growth and the participatory nature of the Internet," Gross said.
PrepCom-3 failed to reach agreement on a number of contentious issues, and the United States is working with other governments, private enterprise and nongovernmental organizations to craft an agreement that will bridge diverse positions on how, by whom and to what degree the Internet should be governed or regulated.
"We see the way in which the Internet has worked so far, and we support its continuing evolution. What we don't want to see is an intergovernmental group coming in to stifle that," Gross said.
He noted that the preparatory meeting would resume for three days on the eve of the WSIS summit in Tunis. "Between now and then, we are already and we'll continue to be very actively engaged in bilateral discussions, not only with governments but with other groups -- industry, civil society and the like. And, you know, we are very hopeful that when the world leaders gather in Tunis in November, that they will have a document to endorse that we can all be proud of," he said.
During the live Internet chat on November 2, Gross will be available to answer questions about the upcoming WSIS summit in Tunis and the U.S. position on various issues relating to Internet governance. The chat will be held at 11:00 a.m. EST (1600 GMT).
To ask a question or make a comment, please register at iipchat@state.gov. If you already have participated in one of our previous discussions, there is no need to register again. Just use the same user name and password. We neither require nor encourage the use of full names. You may identify yourself by the user name of your choice.
