World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)

it's that summit time of year... first, the summit of the americas... now, starting on wednesday in tunis, the wsis...

Reform of Internet governance is the most divisive issue on the agenda. The web is currently managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organisation based in California in the United States.

ICANN has an international advisory board, but the United States has veto power, giving it effective control over the global domain name system.

Several countries are calling for a more democratic inter-governmental organisation to rule the Internet. Ten proposals for reform are under discussion.

so far, no agreement has been hammered out in conferences preparatory to the summit and, to further complicate matters, the host country has become an issue unto itself...

Following protests by civil society groups in October, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote back to say: "The High Commissioner (for Human Rights) has proposed to the Tunisian authorities that they take several measures to remove obstacles to the full enjoyment to the right to freedom of expression and association."

The group Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres, RSF) ranks Tunisia 147th out of 167 countries, and describes surveillance of the Internet in Tunisia as "very serious". RSF says its secretary Robert Menard was denied entry into Tunisia earlier this week.

The Tunisia Monitoring Group of the network International Freedom of Expression Exchange said in a report in September that Tunisia is "not suitable for a UN summit."

oughta be interesting if nothing else... probably more interesting than watching george stump his way around japan, china, mongolia and south korea... i wonder if he'll be staying overnight in ulaanbaatar... i doubt he'll be in a great hurry to get to s. korea... (see above...)

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