WSIS to Consider Internet Governance Under U.N.

penciling_in writes "The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) starting next week in Geneva is expected to attract more than 50 heads of state and 6,000 delegates who will address issues from the digital divide to Internet governance. It will be addressing the broad range of themes concerning the Information Society and adoption of a Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action, which reportedly includes a recommendation to place the governance of the Internet under the United Nations. In response to issues leading up to this event, CircleID has been running a number of articles including Karl Auerbach's piece, 'Will ICANN Reveal Its True Self To WSIS?' and an extensive Interview (Part I | Part II) by Geert Lovink with Milton Mueller, author of 'Ruling the Root', one of the first detailed investigations into the Internet domain name policies." There's a Reuters story on this conference.

Re:Why not go totally p2p?

[Bagels]

May I direct you to Freenet [sourceforge.net]? Strictly speaking, people are "in charge" (the developers), but the whole principle is that pretty much anything goes on Freenet - it's designed to be perfectly anonymous (when coupled with the correct browser), so material posted on Freenet can't be forced off.

Re:Why not go totally p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

ip assignment, name assignment, ssl keys for ecom and all the records involved in that (like whois) is about it.

unfortunatly its not easy to do without both of those... maybe someone has some sort of ipv6 solution to 'make it all better'

If you read the proposal....

[Matt Clare]

...it's basically just changing the name of ICANN and perhaps the members. I actually think that something like this is a good idea. After all, ICANN is right now subject to the American courts, what if the RIAA says decides that it can sue ICANN for assigning IPs to music swapers? If ICANN where to become a UN agency (and never change staff, never leave Cailiforina, etc.) it would be beyond domestic courts. I think it would look a lot like UNESCO. Though I do stress that something like this is the best idea, because suggestions like 'Will Iran be put in charge of online free speech?' are valid. One thing the UN is is charter bound - if this where to be set up like ICANN then unsucks.org could be registered, but things like IPv6 would be promoted so US companies can't hoard IPs and legal action would need the backing of a member state.

Re:Lowest Common Denominator

[Jhon]

Funny how people get so indignant when it's a "controlling multinational entity"

Funny how people consider the UN a "controlling multinational entity". It sure has a history of being able to govern and "control", huh? It sure follows through with all it's security council resolutions, huh?

Think about this. The way the UN is designed PREVENTS it from being able to do ANYTHING without unanimity. This was a problem for the US post revolution/pre constitution. The problem is if they hold a UN equivalent of a constitutional convention, any ability for this "multinational entity" to "control" would result in no nations signing the new charter.

People need to realize what the UN is -- a failed pipe-dream of Roosevelt. It's nothing but a place for countries to "vent". Any effort to do ANYTHING can take decades if it happens at all. Especially with immediate threats (re Angola, Somalia, Congo, etc).

UN isn't only the General Assembly you know...

[billtom]

There's a bit of confusion here about the UN. Now I'm not an expert, but my impression is that the UN is a whole bunch of agencies that have only vague connections between each other. In fact, they call them the UN System of Organizations [unsystem.org]. For example, the Security Council doesn't give orders to UNICEF.

So all the arguments on this thread citing problems with the Security Council or the General Assembly or the Secretariat as reasons not to put internet governance under the UN aren't particularly relevant. For example: "UN shouldn't govern the internet because China has a veto on the Security Council", doesn't make much sense.

What's being suggested is to create a new Special Agency (see the org chart on the site UN System of Organizations I gave above) or to assign internet goverance to an existing Special Agency (the ITU). And the Special Agencies are the most autonomous parts of the UN.