Cape Town — WSIS meeting
In a very serious UN-style room, with hundreds of rows of red-clad seats climbing steeply upwards, we're listening to Nitan Desai (chair of the WGIG, retired UN) and Markus Kummer (secretariat of the WGIG) introduce the WSIS discussion. Kummer says: “there are many who now already start discussing what institutional arrangements should come out of this,” but that's premature in his view. Translation: the ITU is making a big push to take over ICANN, and attempting to focus the work of WGIG on exactly this issue, but Kummer is neutral.
Desai stressed developing nations' concerns, both about involvement in internet governance (translation: ITU has convinced developing nations that ICANN is leaving them out) and capacity building (translation: there is an idea that ICANN has something to do with connectivity worldwide, and connectivity is too expensive for developing countries).
Desai also referred several times to the kind of people involved in ICANN as those “responsible for the establishment and expansion of the internet.” The idea is that establishment has happened, and now governments need to step in and engage. He said [paraphrasing], “you should worry about the interface between those who have established and expanded use of the internet and the future growth of the internet, most of which growth will happen in developing nations.”
Desai outlined three major themes he sees emerging:
1. importance of developing nations to the future of the internet.
2. in these nations, use of the internet for egovernment will be much more important than ecommerce; governments are responsible for access in these countries; so governments will be more involved.
3. convergence between internet and telephony will be driving the discussion.
We're now having presentations from a number of people who are active in African internet issues.
The titanic battle continues. This isn't (really) just about ICANN, although the ITU may be taking the approach that takeover of ICANN is a top priority. This is about coalitions being formed worldwide to push telecom agencies to be the home of all rules for the internet. Whatever “rules for the internet” means.
200 years from now, this entire battle will be described in one sentence. Choose one:
a. At the beginning of the 21st century, the world realized that facilitation of openness for the internet (including many choices of rules, devices, regulatory regimes, and end-user applications) would best encourage worldwide economic growth.
b. At the beginning of the 21st century, the governments of the world folded “internet” policy issues into an international telecommunications regime run by the UN. This medium is no longer in wide use.
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