Internet Governance Debates

Interesting article, Roo!

Other workshops addressed building local legal capacity on Internet governance, Internet infrastructure and security, the fight against spam, the use of information technologies to increase transparency, multilingualism, equal access on the Internet, and management of the domain name system (DNS) and root zone file. The DNS workshop included a discussion of an Internet governance proposal aimed at a compromise way forward on US control (IPW, Access to Knowledge, 31 October 2006).

A heated political debate broke out in the DNS workshop, perhaps providing a glimpse of what will happen if management of the underlying structure of the Internet is opened up in a political rather than technical way. Right now, the structure remains primarily under US control, which is troubling to many but staunchly defended by the current managers of the Internet.