The internet: as we contemplate our navels, the world continues to turn

even those of us who claim to be liberal and espouse global thinking and broader perspectives tend to get our focus stuck inside the borders of the u.s., iraq and occasionally western europe notwithstanding... with all that's going on - rove, hurricanes, bush's free-fall, miers, etc. - it's easy to forget that what's happening in the u.s. is not necessarily the be-all and end-all for the rest of the planet... take, for instance, the current quiet war that's being waged over control of the internet, the outcome of which could profoundly affect this cherished medium we have come to take for granted...

The real world is involved in a battle for control over the virtual world, one of the central issues to be dealt with at the Nov. 16-18 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in the Tunisian capital.

Against the wishes of almost all other governments, Washington wants to maintain the current system of domain names administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private sector, non-profit body that is linked to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

There has even been talk of creating another global computer network, independent of the current system under U.S. control.

The invasion of Iraq and U.S. restrictions on basic rights in the name of the "war on terrorism" have heightened the urgency of the need to place the Internet under international oversight, according to Carlos Afonso, a Brazilian member of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) set up by the United Nations.

[...]

The tendency, given the divisions and U.S. resistance to any change whatsoever, is towards the emergence of a compromise solution, in which ICANN would continue to perform its technical functions, while moving gradually over to a system of multilateral oversight, said Afonso...

and, lest you didn't read between the lines, the article 'splains it for you...

[T]he Bush administration's demonstrated contempt for multilateralism has fuelled the struggle for international Internet governance...

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