Quote: I don't think it is wise to let any single country have
"control" of the internet, due to its international nature.
Actually, it's because of
the international nature of the Internet that it is absolutely critical for the United States to retain control of the
Internet through ICANN, a fact that the UN World Summit on the Information Society realized on 15 November.
Why? Let me briefly explain before I dive back into writing my "ethics of RTG use in space exploration" paper
for Astronomy class. Isn't procrastination wonderful? But I digress.
For all its merits, every country recognizes that the United Nations and its agencies do not make for particularly
efficient or effective regulatory bodies because of its quasi-democratic nature and ponderous decision-making process.
The situation is quite similar to that described in the old maxim which notes that too many cooks ruin the soup. The
point is that the Internet is used by people throughout the world, and like it or not, it is absolutely crucial for
everything from commerce to simple maintenance of information networks for there to be a single set of standards for the
underlying foundations of the entire supernetwork. In such a case, having a single entity being responsible for creating
and implementing the standards obviously always yields more efficient results than having a consortium of well over two
hundred entities trying to first reach a consensus and then trying to uniformly implement it.
The other guiding principle in the World Summit on the Information Society decision was simple, but extremely important
nonetheless: that ICANN has done its work well and reasonably fairly since its inception, regardless of the fact that it
was established by an executive agency of the U.S. federal government. If it isn't broken, why fix it?
Note that the committee, in its deliberations in Tunis, were quite often critical of the United States. Furthermore,
from all of the accounts I have read, the United States did not play a key role in the debates itself, though it was
certainly in the spotlight in the subject of the discussion. In fact, it seems as if was the Pakistani delegate who
played the central role in the discussion. Regardless, the point is that the United Nations assembly convened to
determine the future of the Internet recognized that the United Nations itself was certainly far from the ideal medium
for internet governance, and that having the United States retain its current status as the administrator for the
Internet, though advised by a new UN organization, would be the best course of action, especially when confronted with
possible alternatives such as having individual countries or blocs detach and form separate Internet spheres and
introduce competing standards.
And with that, back I go to my paper. Ta ta!
s h i n s e n g u m i
Minitokyo Policy, Forum, Review, and Category Maintenance Moderator Emeritus
Do not expect to be applauded when you do the right thing, and do not expect to be
forgiven when you err, but even your enemies will respect commitment, and a conscience at peace is worth a thousand
tainted victories.
