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ALTHOUGH Washington looks set for the time being to retain its exclusive control of the technical "plumbing" of the Internet -- the addressing system that directs web traffic -- calls for more international involvement are growing ever louder. Many see change as inevitable even if not imminent.
At a recent meeting in Geneva to prepare for next month's world information society summit in Tunis, the US found itself almost completely isolated among governments in its insistence on maintaining the status quo.
Even the European Union (EU), previously regarded as a US ally, came out firmly in favour of a "new co-operation model" for the overseeing of the addressing system that would provide "international government involvement" in policymaking.
The job of allocating Internet addresses worldwide, and managing the master directory known as the root zone file, now rests with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), a California-based non-profit body under contract to the US Commerce Department.
The US government has the final say on additions and changes to the root zone file, giving it global control of access to websites. While the US has never blocked address changes requested by other countries, many governments resent the fact that it could.
"It's difficult for many governments to accept that the US has the theoretical possibility to stop the Internet working in their country," says David Hendon, spokesman for the EU delegation at the Geneva meeting.
The present system reflects the historical development of the Internet, which emerged in the 1970s from research largely funded by the US Defense Department.
Before Icann took over the addressing function in 1998, it was run more or less single-handedly by the late Jon Postel, a professor at the University of Southern California.
The original plan of the US government was to hand over full responsibility for the addressing system to Icann next September when the current memorandum of understanding with the Commerce Department expires.
But last June the Bush administration infuriated many countries by saying it intended to "maintain its historic role in authorising changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file". This was seen as a pre-emptive strike ahead of a UN working group report that said "no single government should have a pre-eminent role in relation to international Internet governance". However, the group was unable to agree on what exactly should replace the present system and governments recently came no nearer to a solution.
Countries such as Brazil and Iran favour some kind of intergovernmental Internet body to tackle the whole range of Internet governance issues, while others have advocated a more flexible "multi-stakeholder" approach involving the private sector and the broader Internet community as well as governments.
Developing countries have also expressed discontent over slow progress in introducing multilingual domain name and addresses, and their high costs of Internet access.
Washington, whose stance is widely supported by business and Internet professionals, argues that handing over technical management of the Internet to a UN or other intergovernmental body would stifle flexibility and innovation, and undermine the stability and security of the Internet system.
"One of the primary reasons for the success of the Internet has been the bottom-up approach to governance," says David Gross, the senior State Department official who headed the US delegation to the recent talks. "We will not agree to the UN taking over management of the Internet."
While the US can in theory hang on to its privileged position indefinitely, critics argue that this could hinder international co-operation in tackling other vital Internet governance issues such as spam and cybercrime. Some predict attempts to break Icann's monopoly by setting up rival networks.
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FT Syndication Service
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