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U.N. Agrees to Examine How Internet Is Governed
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 09:47:12 -0500
U.N. Agrees to Examine How Internet Is Governed December 15, 2003 By JENNIFER L. SCHENKER International Herald Tribune GENEVA, Dec. 13 - For the United States and some other industrial nations, the most significant development at the United Nations conference on the Internet may have been what did not happen. In the four-day conference, which ended Friday, the industrialized powers had feared that developing nations would vote for the United Nations to take administrative control of the Internet and call for a new pool of money to help poorer countries go online - money that industrial nations presumably would be expected to provide. Instead, the delegates agreed that a United Nations working group should be set up to examine whether to introduce more international oversight of the Internet's semiformal administrative bodies. Those bodies include Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a company under contract to the United States Commerce Department that coordinates Internet addresses and some other technical issues. Another United Nations committee will be set up to review ways of paying for efforts to connect the world's poor to the Internet. Industrialized countries pushed for and won an endorsement of intellectual property rights as well as human rights and media freedom. The leader of the United States' delegation, David Gross, said the conference outcome meant that private sector interests would not lose their stake in how the Internet is governed, although they would have to make more room at the table for other stakeholders. "We are still listening, very carefully, about how that might be done," Mr. Gross said. The United States nonetheless took its lumps at the conference. "Even if it is not true, there is a perception that the U.S. government is running the Internet," said Eli M. Noam, who is the head of the Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia University and was a session moderator at the conference. Many public comments were similar to those expressed by Shashi Tharoor, the United Nations under secretary general for information and communications, who said in an interview, "Unlike the French Revolution, the Internet revolution has lots of liberty, some fraternity and no equality." According to the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations agency that organized the conference, only 1 percent of people in the world's poorest countries are connected to the Internet. To illustrate the gap between rich and poor countries, the agency noted that the 450,000 residents of Luxembourg have more Internet capacity than Africa's 760 million people. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/technology/15divide.html?ex=1072482369&ei=1&en=35d3f8f29baed7fd --------------------------------- Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like! Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here: http://www.nytimes.com/ads/nytcirc/index.html HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales () nytimes com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help () nytimes com.Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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- U.N. Agrees to Examine How Internet Is Governed Dave Farber (Dec 15)