US manages to retain hold over Internet

US manages to retain hold over Internet

	Published : Thu, 17 Nov 2005 17:35 By : Paula Demarzio Print this Story

The United States won the battle to retain charge of the Internet. The US agreed to a compromise of beginning talks to give up some control and the long-term governance of the DNS, which is through the non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) headquartered in California.

A consensus was worked out ahead of United Nations summit on the information society this week. Status quo will be maintained as far as the current addressing and traffic direction system is concerned.

The deal has averted a threat that would have split the world wide Internet into a number of competing zones each having its own governance and technical specifications. Officials were worried that such a split could have lead to a situation where some totalitarian countries would restrict the freedom of expression on the internet.

Countries, including China, Saudi Arabia and Iran, opposed the United States control of the DNS. They wanted it to be given to a body under the auspices of the United Nations.

David Hendon, the EU representative, believed that US had eventually managed to win over politicians at every level of government, following after a letter from Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, to the EU.

Though the US will continue to be in charge of the internet’s technical, administrative and addressing issues, an international Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is to be set up to tackle legal issues, such as spam e-mails, cyber crimes etc.

The conference being attended by 170 countries can now concentrate on its primary goal of developing a genuine world-wide information society, which will make internet available to all by 2015.

Presently, only 14 per cent of the world population has internet access as against 62 per cent in the US.