The idea that one government, one organization, or a single group "controls the Internet" is laughable. In my reporting lately, I heard someone refer to the 'Net as "modulated anarchy." I like that. But that, of course, doesn't stop some from trying to reign in the chaos, at least a little bit. The Internet Governance Forum bills itself as "a forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue" on a number of Internet-related topics. Those topics include everything from cyber-security, to ICT for development, to helping people with disabilities better access the Internet. The IGF grew out of the mandate of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a series of two major Internet meetings organized by the United Nations in 2003 and 2005. The idea was for the IGF to bring together not just governments, but businesses and non-profits (anyone with a stake in the Internet really), and try to carry forward both the initiatives and momentum engendered by the WSIS meetings.
The IGF just wrapped up its fourth annual meeting this week. It took place in the resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. As always, one of the major talking points is the internationalization of the Internet. You see, some people around the world don't like the fact that one of the few centralized parts of the Internet is the domain name system. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is the California-based non-profit that was tasked by the United States government to do this. ICANN ensures that when you type discoverynews.com into your browser, you come to this site, and not, say, a Russian porn site.
Well, some at the IGF take issue with the fact that such a central part of the Internet is "controlled" by an organization seen as having close ties with the United States. For its part, ICANN says it has been trying to internationalize. The US government has distanced itself from the organization, and ICANN has gone out and put together a board that includes a non-US majority. But the big news recently was that after more than a decade of technical and policy work, ICANN is now allowing domain names in other scripts beside the Latin script. Suddenly, Russians, Koreans, Chinese and Greeks (to name just a few) can use their own characters, their own alphabets, to get where they want to go online.
I caught up with Rod Beckstrom, who took over as ICANN's President and CEO about four and a half months ago. He was at the IGF to fight ICANN's corner. Rod started our conversation with a great quote: "The beautiful thing about the Internet is that no one's in control. The Internet is the most incredible, massive decentralized system in mankind's history." Here's the audio:
A Conversation with Rod Beckstrom, President and CEO of ICANN
(Picture by SílviaSS via Wikipedia).
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