The United Nations convened 200 government and private-sector representatives this weekend for its "Global Forum on Internet Governance." This isn't new, but a number of countries are complaining about the influence of the U.S. on the Internet through the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), chartered by the Clinton Administration in 1998 as a private non-profit body. In a shocking development, many participants at the United Nations conference suggested that Internet governance should be housed at (gasp) the United Nations!
The Associated Press quotes Sudanese professor Izzeldin Mohamed Osman: "The United Nations would be a good platform for that, because it has legitimacy. The countries are all represented."
If mere representation were enough to legitimate an organization and mere legitimacy were enough to ensure effectiveness, then I can't understand why my high school student council never got us that extra month off.
According to the Reuters story on the conference, the forum is due to result in a report for the United Nations Information and Communication Technology Task Force to be presented at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in 2005. The drafters of this report must be careful to avoid simplistic resolutions to the complicated problems presented by Internet governance. Much of the success of today's Internet has been achieved by non-traditional peer networks that would be terribly burdened by the implementation of a more-traditional bureaucracy. Don't take the easy way out.