UNITED NATIONS: "Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced today the establishment of the Working Group on Internet Governance...." Nice to see ICANN ALAC-er Vittorio Bertola on the Working Group. More: Also good to see ICANN Board Member Alejandro Pisanty on the panel.
Still, I'm still skeptical over whether the Internet needs to be governed. And even assuming that a need exists, I'm equally skeptical about whether the Internet can be governed in any meaningful way. In the press release, Markus Kummer, Executive Coordinator of the United Nations secretariat of the Working Group, says: “Issues that we expect to address include the management of Internet resources, network security, cyber-crime, spam and multilingualism.” That's an enormous agenda. Just think of the resources that ICANN has tried to bring to bear just on the first issue.
"Governance," in my view, is too bold a word for what reasonably can be accomplished. For every category except "cyber-crime," I think we're talking about, at most, a set of "best practices" or "aspirational goals" for users and infrastructure providers.
More: A different version of the press release, circulated today by e-mail, contains a more explicit reference to ICANN: "The establishment of the Working Group was requested by the first phase of the Summit, held in Geneva last December. At that time, countries agreed to continue the dialogue on the management of the Internet, at both the technical and policy levels. Many countries were happy with the current minimalist arrangements under the aegis of the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). But others felt there was a need for some intergovernmental framework, as with telecommunications, preferably under a United Nations umbrella." I thought the word choice of "minimalist arrangements" was particularly intriguing. I wonder if the people and companies actually bound by ICANN-agreements would agree with that characterization. (CircleID has the entire e-mail version of the press release here.)
