Month: November 2007

Reflection on what was wrong and what was right with the Rio Internet Governance Forum is not waiting for the February 25 “stocktaking” session planned by the IGF's Secretariat. Civil society advisory group member Adam Peake has already opened an interesting dialogue on the governance list. I have some opinions about that…

Too much of the energy of the Forum and its participants is being thrown away on issues that are not global in scope, and have nothing to do with global governance of the Internet. We all must pay closer attention to the distinction between issues that are best addressed at the national, local or regional levels and those that truly require global coordination and global institutions. IGF should be restricted to the global. If the truly global governance issues are actually quite narrow and specialized, and don't include the issues that turn you on, so be it. Those who are fundamentally not interested in those issues should find a more appropriate venue for their activities. The disappointing thing about IGF 2 was that the dialogue was so cluttered with things that do not require or will never get international coordination or agreement that it was impossible to focus on the things that do.

Amidst all the drama surrounding ICANN’s Los Angeles meeting (Vint Cerf’s exit from the ICANN Board, protests over the free expression implications of its new gTLD policy, the Whois-privacy debate and steps toward new multilingual domain names) an important signal about the future of ICANN was almost lost in the shuffle. The U.S. Commerce Department announced a full-scale, public review of the global Internet governance regime’s status. Interested parties have until 15 February 2008 to submit their comments. This initiative must be perceived in combination with renewed signs of “enhanced cooperation” – the WSIS-inspired code words for European demands that the U.S. accommodate their concerns about unilateral U.S. control of the Internet’s root. Together it faintly signals some kind of movement on the thorniest issue in global internet governance. Movement in exactly which direction remains unclear, but pressure from BRIC countries in the UN Internet Governance Forum certainly plays role in it.