This Had Better Not Be True (US to Give Up “Root Server Control” of the Internet?)

Go here for the BizzyBlog mid-November post, which was just before the WSIS conference opened.
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Internet Structure Background: In response to this post, NixGuy created the clearest plain-language link-rich explanation I have yet seen of the origins and current state of the Internet’s technical setup and governance. Bottom line as of today: “… the rest of the world has no cause to complain that we have not shared control or input over organization of the internet. In fact, as the above research shows, we have bent over backward to invite world participation.” Massive thanks, NG; tremendous job. Read (and save) the whole thing.
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BEGIN ORIGINAL POST:

The event that is the subject of this post allegedly occurred “at the third and final preparatory meeting for next month’s World Summit on the Information Society.”

Via Drudge (link since removed), in the UK Guardian (bolds are mine; “Hendon” is David Hendon, the UK Department for Trade and Industry’s director of business relations):

Breaking America’s Grip on the Net

(Hendon) had just announced a political coup over the running of the internet.

Old allies in world politics, representatives from the UK and US sat just feet away from each other, but all looked straight ahead as Hendon explained the EU had decided to end the US government’s unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium.

In the early days, an enlightened Department of Commerce (DoC) pushed and funded expansion of the internet. And when it became global, it created a private company, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) to run it.

But the DoC retained overall control, and in June stated what many had always feared: that it would retain indefinite control of the internet’s foundation - its “root servers”, which act as the basic directory for the whole internet.

A number of countries represented in Geneva, including Brazil, China, Cuba, Iran and several African states, insisted the US give up control, but it refused. The meeting “was going nowhere,” Hendon says, and so the EU took a bold step and proposed two stark changes: a new forum that would decide public policy, and a “cooperation model” comprising governments that would be in overall charge.

Much to the distress of the US, the idea proved popular. Its representative hit back, stating that it “can’t in any way allow any changes” that went against the “historic role” of the US in controlling the top level of the internet.

But the refusal to budge only strengthened opposition, and now the world’s governments are expected to agree a deal to award themselves ultimate control. It will be officially raised at a UN summit of world leaders next month and, faced with international consensus, there is little the US government can do but acquiesce.

As the title of the post says, this had better not be true, and I’m hoping this is wishful thinking on the part of the Guardian.

This action could be the stuff petty tyrants’ dreams are made of.

John Bolton, call your office. “Acquiescing” is not an option.
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UPDATE: Here’s a statement I was going to save for the weekend (HT IPI Techbytes e-mail; IPI is the Institute for Policy Innovation, a free-market think tank):

Dr. Milton Mueller of the Syracuse University School of Information Studies described the recent goings-on in Geneva, where the UN’s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has been debating the future of Internet governance:

What seems to have been lost in the shuffle is the idea of distributed, cooperative control that involves individuals, technical and academic groups, Internet businesses and limited, lawful interactions with governments. The idea that nation-states should not have the ability to arbitrarily intervene in the Internet’s operation whenever they feel like it, but should be bound by clear, negotiated constitutional principles, has been crowded out of the debate.

With Commerce in control, other nations can’t intervene. Putting “governments in overall charge,” as the Guardian article indicated, guarantees intervention by tyrants who don’t like what their citizens are saying, and narrow-minded commerical actions by governments that will negatively affect the world economy.

This is something I would expect a still-in-power Clinton Administration to gleefully give into. It would be impossible to read a surrender on this by the Bush Administration as anything but a major betrayal.

UPDATE 2: It seems to me that boycotting the conference would solve the problem.

UPDATE 3: For what it’s worth, there were people concerned about this conference many months ago. Stephen M. Ryan of eWeek raised the alarm way back in April.

UPDATE 4: From National Review: “World Wide (Web) Takeover–The United Nations wants the Internet”

UPDATE 5: Pamela at Atlas Shrugs is ON FIRE about this, the UN in general and Chinese censorship. Go there. And I should have made clearer in Update 2 that boycotting the WSIS would solve the immediate problem. The only way to solve the long-term problem of greedy tyrant-states’ desires to limit our national sovreignty and expropriate resources we developed is to get out of the UN and evict them from Turtle Bay.
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More background:
- The Declaration of Principles from the 2003 Geneva meeting
- The 2003 Plan of Action
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Previous Posts:
- July 5–US Retains Control of Internet Directory: AP Has Hissy Fit
- September 29–Internet Control Stays in the US (I should think so)
- October 3–The Whining About “Control” of the Internet Continues (Plus the “Gobbled Up” Internet Addresses Canard)