CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Global Governance

Using the Perspectives

As the internet plays an increasingly vital role in the world, countries and institutions have started to wrestle with the question of who will control it. In an article in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs, Kenneth Neil Cukier explores this dilemma. He points out four key areas that must be regulated to keep the Internet operated efficiently: the distribution of domain names, the assignment of Internet Protocol numbers, the control of root servers, and the coordination of technical standards. But just who will have this regulatory power is a question without an easy answer. Presently, it belongs to the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an American non-profit established in 1998. Many, however, are unsatisfied with this arrangement.

"Many governments feel that, like the phone network, the Internet should be administered under a multilateral treaty. ICANN, in their view, is an instrument of American hegemony over cyberspace: its private sector approach favors the United States, Washington retains oversight authority, and its Governmental Advisory Committee, composed of delegates from other nations, has no real powers."

1.  Why do many governments want the Internet to be controlled by a multi-lateral treaty? What perspective does this suggest?
     

The United States had intended to grant ICANN complete autonomy in 2006. But contrary to this plan and despite—or perhaps because of—international pressure, the United States changed its mind in June of 2005. This decision was announced to the world by a 300-word Commerce Department statement.

"Ultimately, it all came down to national interest: Washington, with so much at stake in the internet's continuing to function as it had, decided it was not prepared to risk any changes. So . . . the U.S. government made a preemptive strike . . .The United States would retain its authority over ICANN, period."

2.  Why did the United States change its mind? What perspective would best justify this action, and why?
     

The United States' new position was immediately met with sharp criticism and continues to draw fire from supporters of a more multilateral approach. Cukier concedes that Washington's management of the Internet has been largely fair and effective, but he calls its unilateralism unsustainable over the longer term. The solution that eventually emerges from this conflict, he writes, depends on which perspective dominates.

"The U.S. government saw the creation of ICANN as the voluntary relinquishing of a critical source of power in the digital age, others saw it as a clever way for Washington to maintain its hegemony by placing Internet governance in the U.S. private sector . . . Whether and how these perspectives are bridged will determine the future of a global resource that nearly all of us have come to take for granted."

3.  Which perspective do you think should prevail? Why?
     

Kenneth Neil Cukier, "Who Will Control the Internet," Foreign Affairs, Nov./Dec. 2005.