Net WSIS outcome

THE major outcome of the second World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) was sealed even before the summit for-mally began in Tunis, Tunisia. On November 15, 2005 -- a day before the three-day WSIS got underway -- US negotiators secured a deal that would let their country retain charge of the net's addressing sys-tem. The summit agreed to set up an international forum on Internet gover-nance (FIG) to discuss Internet-related issues. It will, however, not have any binding authority.

Internet governance was slated to be the most contentious issue on the agenda of the WSIS. The guiding principles of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU, a UN body), which organised the summit, state "the management of the Internet should be multilateral, transparent and democratic". But the US was firmly against such devolution arguing that this would "stifle technological innova-tions and increase censorship of the Internet by undemocratic regimes". In June this year, US department of com-merce reneged on an earlier promise of relinquishing control over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) -- a California-based body, which manages the Internet's root servers (see 'The bully again', Down To Earth, August 15, 2005; also see box: The root question). This set the US on a warpath with developing countries such as Brazil, which relies on the Internet for 90 per cent of its tax collections.

In the weeks preceding the confer-ence, China, Cuba, Iran, India and Brazil campaigned for an international body to manage the Internet's root servers. Even the European Union (EU) seemed to be veering around to the opinion against US control over the Internet. At a preparatory meet in Geneva on October 5, 2005 to discuss the WSIS agenda EU representatives pro-posed, "A new forum that would decide a policy on the Internet and a model comprising governments that would be in overall charge of the changes." As the US representative to the meet burst out saying "the US won't in any way allow changes that go against the country's of the Internet", a showdown at the WSIS seemed imminent.

The showdown was averted. The US has agreed to the FIG proposed by the EU. Governments, international agencies and civil society groups will make up the FIG. But the body lacks teeth. As David Gross, chief negotiator to the WSIS for USA, pointed out, "We did not change anything with regard to the role of the US. Icann will keep its current responsibilities for over-seeing domain names and addressing systems. The proposed forum would not have any binding authority."

With the show-down averted, WSIS finally got down to matters less extreme. People from govern-ments, civil societies and international bodies had par-ticipated in the meeting. But civil society groups refused to embrace the outcome of WSIS whole-heartedly as the failure to wrest control of the Internet from the US has left a bitter taste.

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