The U.N. Is Not The Answer
Concern regarding ICANN's role in governing the internet is growing around the world. The United Nations is seeking to play a significant role in future governance of the internet. Against this backdrop, ICANN President and CEO Dr. Paul Twomey met with Secretary-General Annan at U.N. headquarters. On one hand, at least the Secretary-General did not imitate ICANN's behavior and had the grace and manners not to snub Dr. Twomey. On the other hand, UN management is not the answer for improving internet governance.

At a meeting with two hundred industry leaders, diplomats and others, the Secretary-General was quoted as saying "The world has a common interest in ensuring the security and dependability of this new medium." The Secretary-General was correct. However, U.N management would not achieve the Secretary-General's goal. The history of the U.N. demonstrates organizational inefficiency, bureaucratization and opacity - just the oppositive of what is needed in internet governance.

One of the specific concerns expressed about ICANN is that, because it operates under agreement with and supervision by the Department of Commerce, "Washington could force the disruption of Internet traffic to entire countries by deleting them from central computers - like ripping out pages of a telephone directory." However, such apocalyptic scenarios have absolutely no basis in fact. As an extreme example, the US never disrupted the internet service to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

For all of its shortcomings, ICANN, has generally been apolitical. The UN, by contrast, is an intensely political entity. Moreover, many of the countries that seek greater "internationalization" of the internet governance have long histories of strict censorship and other repressive actions towards their own citizens. Allowing such politicized control of the internet would sharply increase the likelihood of international censorship, cutting of national access and other adverse actions against the net. The result would be to degrade the potential of the internet, not just for the industrialized countries, but also for the developing world.

There is no question that the internet governance needs to be substantially more transparent and responsive. However, the solution is an increased, not reduced, role for the Department of Commerce. More specifically, were DOC to ensure that ICANN adhered to the Data Quality Act, many of the enhanced transparency and utility goals for internet governance could be achieved without politicization of the process.