ITU and the Increasing Controversy Over Internet Governance

Home / News

ITU and the Increasing Controversy Over Internet Governance

Intellectual Property Watch
November 18, 2008, 1:23 pm PDT Views: 6,926 Add Comment

The Council of the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is set to talk Wednesday about the Union's contribution to follow-up of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the third Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

Turkey has tabled a resolution on strengthening the ITU's role in the IGF. The discussion comes at a time when a tense debate between the ITU and its critics has arisen over the best governance models for the internet. The debate culminated in a highly critical speech by ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Touré at a recent meeting in Cairo of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the other "multi-stakeholder" competitor to the ITU. Touré labelled the IGF as becoming "a waste of time sometimes" and criticised the participation of governments in ICANN's Government Advisory Committee (GAC) as being "cosmetic."

Read full story: Intellectual Property Watch

By CircleID Reporter – CircleID's internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us. Visit Page

The Weekly Wrap

More and more professionals are choosing to publish critical posts on CircleID from all corners of the Internet industry. If you find it hard to keep up daily, consider subscribing to our weekly digest. We will provide you a convenient summary report once a week sent directly to your inbox. It's a quick and easy read.

I make a point of reading CircleID. There is no getting around the utility of knowing what thoughtful people are thinking and saying about our industry.

VINTON CERF
Co-designer of the TCP/IP Protocols & the Architecture of the Internet