[IP] Milton Mueller: U.S. unilateral control of ICANN backfired last week
Begin forwarded message:
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@xxxxxxxx>
Date: October 3, 2005 3:52:44 PM EDT
To: politech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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@xxxxxxx>
To: <declan@xxxxxxxx>
CC: <farber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
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
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