IGF keeps U.S. control over Internet, says analyst

Creation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will only succeed in keeping control over the Internet in the hands of the U.S., says one Canadian research firm.

The IGF is to be set up following an agreement signed recently at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, Tunisia.

London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research has described the soon-to-be-created body as a "non-binding" international forum to address concerns relating to the Internet. The research firm said such a forum only delays the imminent "showdown over control of the Internet."

"The Internet facilitates billions of dollars in international commerce every year," said Info-Tech analyst Curtis Gittens. "There isn’t a country in the world whose economy isn’t affected by the Internet; therefore, it shouldn’t be under the control of just one country."

For instance, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit entity created by the U.S Department of Commerce to manage Internet name servers, should be replaced with a more transparent and global decision-making body, said Gittens.

He said such lack of transparency of ICANN's processes was demonstrated by its recent renewal of VeriSign Inc.'s contracts for control over the registry of the dot-com and dot-net domains.

"The process ICANN used to award the dot-net domain to VeriSign was rife with inconsistencies and errors. Giving VeriSign the dot-com domain contract was just the outgrowth of an already seriously flawed process," said Gittens.

The debate on how the Internet should be governed has engaged many sectors from industry and governments for the past two years. That debate reached its zenith at the United Nations-sponsored WSIS last week when all declared victory, following the signing of the Internet governance agreement.

But that agreement is open to different interpretations. Nearly everyone -- the governments of the U.S. and the European Union as well as the ICANN and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) -- are reading into it essentially what they want to read.

The U.S., for instance, which has fought to retain its historic role of managing the Internet to the extent of angering the E.U., one of its biggest economic allies, thinks the agreement does not change the role of the U.S. and the ICANN.