Who Controls the Internet?
The Web has become just another front in the battle between the United States and the rest of the world, and Tunisia was a convenient time and place to vent strong anti-American feelings. Although the United States government has not meddled in ICANN’s operations yet, our U.N. brethren fear that an America with a unilateral foreign policy will eventually become an America with a unilateral Internet policy. Other countries have every right to be suspicious. If it wanted, the U.S. government could take over ICANN and block Internet traffic to a nation that harbors terrorists. It could access the databases that house domain names and use the information to take down computers serving up anti-American rhetoric or locate state enemies. But the idea that the United States “controls the Internet”—or could control the Internet—through ICANN is a canard. Sure, the State Department could pull some gnarly pranks, like funneling traffic from Iranian government sites to porn portals, starving Frenc
Is the Internet erasing national borders? Will the future of the Net be set by Internet engineers, rogue programmers, the United Nations, or powerful countries? Who’s really in control of what’s happening on the Net? In this provocative new book, Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu tell the fascinating story of the Internet’s challenge to governmental rule in the 1990s, and the ensuing battles with governments around the world. It’s a book about the fate of one idea–that the Internet might liberate us forever from government, borders, and even our physical selves. We learn of Google’s struggles with the French government and Yahoo’s capitulation to the Chinese regime; of how the European Union sets privacy standards on the Net for the entire world; and of eBay’s struggles with fraud and how it slowly learned to trust the FBI. In a decade of events the original vision is uprooted, as governments time and time again assert their power to direct the future of the Internet. The destiny of the Inter
Q. What is the purpose of the conference in Tunis? A. The World Summit on the Information Society – or WSIS – which started today, is a UN-sponsored conference to try to develop internationally agreed principles for the future development of the internet. In the first 15 years, the internet has grown in a largely unregulated manner, with just one or two privately run organisations taking reponsibility for some of the organisational aspects of the web – for instance, in the UK, Nominet, a private company, operates as the recognised registry for all web addresses that end “.co.uk”. Nominet was never appointed to the position; it never had to bid for the job. But it has that task. Now consider that same position, but globally. The most popular and famous domain names – those that end “.com”, “.org” and “.edu”, for instance – are all looked after by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, another private company, this time based in California. And therein lies th
by Andrew Starling If you’ve ever been asked this question, you’ll know it’s a difficult one to answer. The obvious reply is “nobody”. Problem is – nobody believes you. July 12, 2000 Pretty much every other communication medium has somebody in control. Telephone systems are run by telephone companies and regulated by governments; postal services are a mixture of national monopolies and enterprise, usually regulated by governments; newspapers, TV and radio are run by corporations and regulated by – guess who? – governments yet again. But not the Internet. Actually that’s not entirely true. Corporations and governments do have a say about the way the Internet is run. What sets it apart is the small degree of control they’re able to exercise, and the fact that so many corporations and governments are involved that none of them individually has much power.
No single entity controls the network. The users of the system determine the policies of acceptable use and enforce what few rules exist. Acceptable use is determined by convention decisions, not by regulation. This consensus decision-making has evolved into a net culture, which dictates how users should act and communicate with others. Successful business activities have been initiated since the beginning of the 1990’s when the federal government lifted restrictions against commercial activities on its links. Two important acceptable use guidelines for doing business on the Internet involve protecting personal choice and preventing intrusive marketing techniques.
