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[ga] United Nations wants a big piece of the Internet. ICANN's death rattle? ISOC's/ITU's rise again to prominance??



All former DNSO GA members or other interested stakeholders/users,

  Maybe ole Kofi's got something here...  But is the UN the best we
can do?  Is this a open invitation for the member less ISOC to take over
or maybe the ITU, god forbid???  Scary thought perhaps?

Background docs:
http://www.un.org/News/ossg/sg/pages/statements.html
 http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/dsgsm215.doc.htm
 http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/sgsm9220.doc.htm
http://aragorn.pb.bialystok.pl/~zspinfo/eng/zsp_sae.html
http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/Faculty/kqs.html

  See: http://news.com.com/2100-1028-5179694.html
United Nations ponders Net's future
March 26, 2004
By Declan McCullagh

UNITED NATIONS--The United Nations wants a big piece of the Internet.

At a summit here this week, delegates from around the world gathered to
take a preliminary step toward U.N. involvement in some of the areas
that are bedeviling Internet users and governments alike, including
spam, network security, privacy and the regulation of the technical
underpinnings that control the sprawling global network.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan set the tone in a speech Thursday,
criticizing the current system through which Internet standards are set
and domain names are handled, a process currently dominated by the
United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. Such structures "must be made
accessible and responsive to the needs of all the world's people," 
Annan said.

On Friday, the summit will hear recommendations from five different U.N.
working groups on topics including everything from domain names to root
server operation to free speech and intellectual property to privacy.

Although the U.N. process is still in its early stages, the result could
dramatically reshape the way the Internet is run and put an end to some
of the informal, collaborative processes that exist today. The master
"root servers" that serve up addresses for country codes and all other
top-level domains, for instance, are operated in part by volunteers
instead of through a U.N.-style apparatus.

Dozens of delegates from developing nations echoed Annan's remarks
throughout the rest of the day, arguing that their governments do not
have a voice in the way the Internet is operated and that more money 
and investment from richer nations is the only way to end the so-called
digital divide. Khalid Saeed, the secretary of Pakistan's Ministry of
Information Technology, said his country must "play an active role in
all layers" of organizations that control the operation of the modern
Internet.

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" -
    Pierre Abelard

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