Controlling the internet

RIO de JANEIRO -- One of the themes discussed at the second Internet Governance Forum relates to something called the critical internet resources. Critical what? That’s what many people tried to figure out in Rio de Janeiro on November 14, starting with the speakers themselves.

Even though there is no agreement on what critical internet resources refer to, most internet specialists would agree that they include the internet’s country-code top level domains such as .in (India), .ca (Canada) or .za (South Africa) and the IP addresses system. The sole administrator of this domain name system is called ICANN, a California-based non-profit acting as the ultimate regulator of the internet’s core components.

Toned down at this year’s IGF, the controversy around whether or not this organisation is legitimate, still lives on. If most speakers in Rio de Janeiro seem to agree that ICANN is in need of a reform, becoming more international and bottom-up, participants are at odds when it comes to how to go about it.

And that’s precisely what’s given internet thinkers headaches. More so after a high-level minister from the Brazilian president Lula’s entourage opened the IGF with a bombastic statement. He insisted that the governance of the internet should be an anti-hegemonic project first and foremost, in reference to the current dominance and control of ICANN by the United States.

Although picked up on during the four days of the IGF, ICANN-bashing didn’t quite materialise in the end. Instead, academics, people from internet organisations, governments, non-governmental organisations and companies rather focused on identifying paths of solution.

But sensibilities were quite high. When a participant from the USA wanted to insist that the current structure (with ICANN) promoted the growth of the internet, Milton Mueller, professor at the School of Information Studies, Syracuse University,  exploded.

“ICANN has nothing to do with the growth of the internet market. It is a facilitator of competition,” he specified, “but it has acted as a cartel structure. Even ten years before ICANN even existed, the internet was growing.”

Willie Currie, policy manager at Association for Progressive Communications, drawing from literature by Daniel W. Drezner, put the different views on international regulatory regimes (such as ICANN) in context. He explained that from what from his understanding, international regulatory regimes are largely influenced by great powers.

“At present, there are two great powers, the US and EU,” Currie said. Citing the example of the TCP/IP debate as an example, he made the point that governments of the USA and the EU took active steps to advance their interests.

“Great powers prevent private sector firms from acquiring power in setting the agenda,” he also said. The same goes for non-governmental organisations.

“I would suggest that China and the USA will neutralise each other,” he stated, before pointing to the fact that India could be temped to act in concert with the EU at times, or siding with other great powers, in defining the agenda of the internet governance. He’ll be keeping an eye on shifting power dynamics and the positions taken by India in particular.

“We might start finding that out at the IGF next year in Delhi,” he concluded, referring to the ambitions of India in internet governance.