Let’s be clear about something, Icann is not the U.S. government nor does it represent the U.S. government. We should also take a second to up and thank the U.S. military for giving the Internet to the world with no strings attached. Even the U.S. Congress complains that Icann is not subject to U.S. government oversight.

Icann manages DNS, that’s it. Icann does not govern the Internet from a policy or regulatory standpoint. Nobody does and that’s why it works. It can be improved but only through an informed process that relies on the involvement, and not as the sole participant either, of *democratic* states, kind of like NATO. My view is unwavering on this point, if you don’t have a truly democratic government, then you have no seat at the table overseeing something that is entirely about access to information. That means yes to Germany, Costa Rica, South Africa, etc., and no to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China… it will never happen but I will continue to fight from the position that anything that allows undemocratic and authoritarian governments to have a hand in global internet governance is a very very bad idea.

Lastly, I think that as a European you may be at risk of underestimating the skepticism that Americans have to the idea that governments can effectively reshape societies or efficiently run anything. Indeed, the Internet has been the single greatest event shaping global society for the last 50 years and government had nothing to do with it other than originally funding it.

I believe that the Internet belongs to us all, not just the US.

I’ll point you to a couple of resources.

1. Check out what the WGIG (The UN appointed group) has to say. http://www.wgig.org/ section III is especially interesting. This is not the rantings of the ignorant, but the result of serious research and dialogue.

2. Also see this blog. Brett Fausett. for instance..
http://blog.lextext.com/blog/_archives/2006/9/19/2341244.html

3. Not all is well with ICANN. Have a look at http://www.icannwatch.org/mission.shtml

4. The Internet Governance Project is a great source of info, it provides lots of background on the issues and is staffed by some really smart folks.
http://www.internetgovernance.org/
I picked up this quote there
Current Oversight Mechanisms for ICANN
One of the destructive myths surrounding the current dialogue is that there is currently no political oversight over the Internet. In many countries, but especially the US, the debate on oversight has been framed as a clash between the option of an Internet free from
government and an Internet that is “run by the United Nations.” That is a false dichotomy, for two reasons. First, it confuses narrow Internet governance (overseeing ICANN) with broader oversight (“running the Internet”). Second, it ignores the fact that political oversight of ICANN exists, but is unilateral: a single government (the US) actively supervises ICANN. Political oversight of ICANN is conducted using three instruments:
· The ICANN Memorandum of Understanding
· The IANA contract
· The US Cooperative Agreement with VeriSign, Inc.
These contracts are held together by a fourth element:
· A sweeping U.S. assertion of policy authority over the DNS root
see http://www.internetgovernance.org/pdf/political-oversight.pdf

5. Check out Froomkin, Mueller, Post, Lessig, Weinberg, these are respected North American Academics researching internet governance. It is a complex topic.

Political grandstanding will not help anyone here, but let me have a dig anyway. I refer you to a post I did a couple of months ago. http://theotherthomasotter.wordpress.com/2006/08/07/from-my-head-to-paperrfid-and-the-long-and-winding/

I agree that the U.N. membership features many good countries that want reform, but were the U.N. itself capable of reform and the U.N. leadership accountable to the member countries that want reform, why haven’t we seen it in even its most minimal form?

Take the WHO as an example, which by all accounts is considered to be a well run organization that is a bright spot for the U.N. Having said that, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is widely considering to have surpassed the WHO in Africa in dealing with the 2 issues that most affect premature mortality in Africa – malaria and clean water. Is anyone going to suggest that the BMGF should come under U.N. oversight because it is currently operating without any? The Internet is no different.

To be blunt, Kofi Annon should stop screwing around trying to get his hand on things that work and get on the with the business of fixing the stuff he is actually responsible for that are tragically failing us all. That man has no credibility across a wide range of constituencies, it’s time for him to move on.

5-6 years ago many of us outside the US were relatively comfortable with the idea of a America as a Benign big brother. Today, I’m not. It is not just about a more bellicose foreign policy, but issues such as net neutrality have a global impact.

It is true that the UN is made up of some countries that have a pretty dismal record, but most of the UN is made up of countriesI would much rather than the US help reform the UN and make it better than undermine it.

Although far from perfect the WIPO is probably a better example of the type of governance we need for the Internet.