[WSIS THETHA] [WSIS CS-Plenary] Think Web's virtually government free? Think again
Eric Muragana
mediatec at sangonet.org.za
Wed Dec 3 11:25:31 GMT 2003
Fyi, Rikke
*********************
Dec. 1, 2003. 01:00 AM
Think Web's virtually government free? Think again
MICHAEL GEIST
LAW BYTES
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which will be held
next week in Geneva, promises to be one of the most interesting
technology-related events in recent memory. The result of months of
discussion, the meeting will attract more than 50 heads of state and
6,000 delegates who will address issues from the digital divide to
Internet governance.
Internet governance questions have proved to be the most contentious
during the lengthy preparations for the summit. At the global level, the
domain name system is administered by the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit corporation in
California. While ICANN enjoys support from the United States as well as
the governments of several other developed countries, including Canada,
many countries worldwide have begun to voice the view that all
governments should share in the administration of the domain name
system. Largely absent from the Internet governance debate in the late
1990s, these countries have awoken to its importance and have sought to
place the issue firmly on the global agenda.
The push for greater governmental involvement in the domain name system,
however, has many critics. Reflecting the popular notion that the
Internet's remarkable growth has come largely without governmental
regulation, critics of increased governmental participation in Internet
governance believe the domain name system is best left to a
decentralized, self-regulatory approach.
A new study I jointly conducted with the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU), a United Nations agency, is being
released today. It casts doubt on the perception that governments are
not already active participants on Internet governance issues. In fact,
governments commonly view their national domain names as critical public
resources that must be subject to governmental oversight. Given the
near-ubiquitous role of government at the national level, it should
therefore come as little surprise that governments have begun to seek a
similarly influential role at the international level, where policy
decisions may have a direct impact on their national domains.
The study surveyed all 189 ITU member states on the role of national
governments within their domestic, country-code top-level domain
(ccTLD). The survey featured questions on the policies of their national
domains and governmental involvement in national and international
Internet governance issues.
Fifty-six countries, representing every global region as well as a broad
cross-section of developed and developing countries, responded to the
survey. This includes the very large, including the United States,
Canada, China, Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, and South Korea,
as well as the very small, including Seychelles, Burkina Faso, the
Dominican Republic, Luxembourg and Cambodia.
Contrary to most expectations, the study finds virtually every
government that responded to the survey either manages, retains direct
control, or is contemplating formalizing its relationship with its
ccTLD. This is true even for governments, such as the United States,
that generally adopt a free-market approach to Internet matters.
When asked about governmental involvement with their ccTLD, 47 per cent
of responding governments said they retain ultimate control over their
ccTLD by either running the domain as a public entity or enacting
legislation granting themselves control over its administration. A
further 25 per cent have taken steps to assert ultimate authority over
their national ccTLD, while 20 per cent of respondents said they were
considering formalizing their relationship with their ccTLD and expected
that relationship to change in the future. Only 7 per cent of
governments said they had no role in their ccTLD and had no plans to
alter the present situation.
While the survey reveals an increasing consensus among governments on
the need to assert a proprietary interest in their national ccTLD, it
also uncovers striking differences in the commercial approaches of those
domains.
Domain names are typically administered by one of four types of entities
at the national level:
* Public institutions.
* Non-profit entities.
* Academic institutions and individuals.
* Commercial companies.
The difference in approach often has a significant impact on both
commercial and policy priorities.
Responding countries with public ccTLDs consistently ranked the public
interest and the protection of intellectual property rights as top
priorities, while the number of domain name registrations was viewed as
the least critical priority. As the ccTLDs move toward increasing
commercialization, the data suggest priorities begin to invert as the
public interest and intellectual property protection diminish in
importance, while the number of domain name registrations increase in
priority.
This finding is supported by the fact that public ccTLDs are far more
likely to include restrictions on domain name registrations that limit
access to the domain to only those registrants who comply with national
presence requirements. Those domains appear willing to forego larger
registration numbers in favour of protecting the public interest -
seemingly defined to include limitations on registrations designed to
preserve the national character of a ccTLD.
With governments already actively participating in the Internet
regulatory and policy process at home, they were bound to demand similar
involvement internationally. The true debate at next week's summit is
therefore not whether governments should be involved in Internet
governance. Rather it is how they will be involved.
Michael Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce
Law at the University of Ottawa and technology counsel with the law firm
Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. He is on-line at http://www.michaelgeist.ca
and http://www.osler.com (mgeist at uottawa.ca). The opinions expressed
herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the
University of Ottawa or Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.
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