#Global Feed: All Foreign Affairs Content Skip to Navigation IFRAME: http://d3.zedo.com/jsc/d3/ff2.html?n=741;c=10/4/1;s=1;d=14;w=728;h=90; IFRAME: http://d3.zedo.com/jsc/d3/ff2.html?n=741;c=10/4/1;s=1;d=22;w=232;h=90; Home Foreign Affairs * Home * International Editions * Digital Newsstand * Job Board * Account Management * RSS * Newsletters ____________________ Search * Login * Register * My Cart Home › Features › Comments › Who Will Control the Internet? Who Will Control the Internet? By Kenneth Neil Cukier November/December 2005 Article Summary and Author Biography Foreign governments want control of the Internet transferred from an American NGO to an international institution. Washington has responded with a Monroe Doctrine for our times, setting the stage for further controversy. KENNETH NEIL CUKIER covers technology and regulatory issues for The Economist. Print Email Buy PDF Postscript No Joke Kenneth Neil Cukier Cukier's update to his November/December 2005 essay "Who Will Control the Internet?" WASHINGTON BATTLES THE WORLD As historic documents go, the statement issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce on June 30 was low-key even by American standards of informality. No flowery language, no fountain-penned signatures, no Great Seal of the United States -- only 331 words on a single page. But the simplicity of the presentation belied the importance of the content, which was Washington's attempt to settle a crucial problem of twenty-first-century global governance: Who controls the Internet? Any network requires some centralized control in order to function. The global phone system, for example, is administered by the world's oldest international treaty organization, the International Telecommunication Union, founded in 1865 and now a part of the UN family. The Internet is different. It is coordinated by a private-sector nonprofit organization called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which was set up by the United States in 1998 to take over the activities performed for 30 years, amazingly, by a single ponytailed professor in California. The controversy over who controls the Internet has simmered in insular technology-policy circles for years and more recently has crept into formal diplomatic talks. Many governments feel that, like the phone network, the Internet should be administered under a multilateral treaty. ICANN, in their view, is an instrument of American hegemony over cyberspace: its private-sector approach favors the United States, Washington retains oversight authority, and its Governmental Advisory Committee, composed of delegates from other nations, has no real powers. This discontent finally boiled over at the UN's World Summit on the Information Society, the first phase of which was held in Geneva in December 2003 (the second phase is set for November in Tunis). Brazil and South Africa have criticized the current arrangement, and China has called for the creation of a new international treaty organization. France wants an intergovernmental approach, but one fundamentally based on democratic values.{See Footnote 1} Cuba and Syria have taken advantage of the controversy to poke a finger in Washington's eye, and even Zimbabwe's tyrant, Robert Mugabe, has weighed in, calling the existing system of Internet governance a form of neocolonialism... This is a premium article You must be a logged in Foreign Affairs subscriber to continue reading. If you wish to continue reading this article please subscribe , or activate your online account to get full online access. Log In E-mail: * __________ Password: * ________ Login Buy PDF Buy a premium PDF reprint of this article. Buy PDF Subscribe Subscribe and get premium access to ForeignAffairs.com. Subscribe Related Response, Sep/Oct 2005 Which Broadband Nation? [fa-article-premium-icon.png] Philip J. Weiser and Thomas Bleha The FCC's Real Wrongs PHILIP J. WEISER Read Essay, May/Jun 2005 Down to the Wire [fa-article-premium-icon.png] Thomas Bleha Once a leader in Internet innovation, the United States has fallen far behind Japan and other Asian states in deploying broadband and the latest mobile-phone technology. This lag will cost it dearly. By outdoing the United States, Japan and its neighbors are positioning themselves to be the first states to reap the benefits of the broadband era: economic growth, increased productivity, and a better quality of life. Read Essay, Jul/Aug 2001 The Missile Defense Debate [fa-article-premium-icon.png] John Newhouse The Bush administration claims national missile defense can protect the United States from long-range missiles fired by rogue states. But that threat is trivial, and Washington's unilateralist approach to missile defense will only anger China and Russia while alienating U.S. allies. Read View the discussion thread. * New Issue * Archive * Regions * Topics * Features * Discussions * Video * Books & Reviews * Classroom * About Us * Subscribe IFRAME: http://d3.zedo.com/jsc/d3/ff2.html?n=741;c=10/4/1;s=1;d=23;w=300;h=190; IFRAME: http://d3.zedo.com/jsc/d3/ff2.html?n=741;c=10/4/1;s=1;d=9;w=300;h=250; Most Viewed 1. The Evolution of Irregular War 2. Back Street's Back 3. The Fall and Rise of the West 4. Morsi's Guns 5. 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