A U.K. governance organization will review The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as it tries to increase transparency after criticism of its close U.S. government ties. The report from One World Trust will be made public next year according to Paul Levins, ICANN's executive officer and vice president of corporate affairs. more»
After citing what he summarized as the "continued lack of consensus" regarding Internet governance, the leading spokesman of the ITU at the IGF stated that it "borders on arrogance" to believe national governments and the ITU should not have the controlling role in Internet governance. more»
Mr. Cerf was speaking at the first-ever Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a United Nations' creation to bring all the decision makers involved in the internet together. ...changes to the way the net works, to accommodate a multi-lingual internet, raised concerns, he said. more»
For many critics, the United Nations-sponsored Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is nothing more than a hot-air event void of any decision-making power. But advocates see the meeting, the first to follow last year's contentious World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), as an opportunity to set the tone for future discussions on who should govern the Internet and how. more»
A year after the United States narrowly avoided a bruising row with the rest of the world over control of the Internet, round two of talks on the Web's future has opened in a UN-sponsored Forum on Internet Governance. more»
We are very satisfied with the work of ICANN. What Europe was objecting was the government oversight of ICANN," EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding told The Associated Press. "I think ICANN is doing a perfectly good job as it is. Just leave it alon more»
On the eve of the first ever United Nations-sponsored Internet Governance Forum, which opens near Athens on Monday, Cerf said national interests had surfaced in recent weeks that would change the process for "internationalizing" Internet addresses. The fresh conflict shows that the high- level global debate over U.S. influence and control of the global network is still unresolved, he said. more»
Starting next week, about 1,200 diplomats and technology ministers will gather at a hotel in the outskirts of Athens to resume a debate that has often pitted the Bush administration and a handful of its Western allies against Brazil, India, China and African countries. Officially, the inaugural meeting of the United Nations' Internet Governance Forum is designed to explore topics like free speech, security, spam and multilingualism... more»
A dispute over U.S. control of the Internet is likely drag on through a conference of state envoys, regulators and technology experts next week to discuss the future of the Internet.
"There are many countries which all have their own interests and opinions," Greek Transport Minister Michalis Liapis said Thursday. "We are starting a dialogue which I think will take many years." Liapis and the Greek government will host the first Internet Governance Forum, a four-day U.N. global summit in Athens that starts Monday. more»
The UN's Internet Governance Forum will hold its first meeting Oct. 30 to discuss the future of the Internet, especially as it relates to access, security, diversity and emerging issues.
...Nitin Desai, who will chair the meeting, said the technology is young and people have not really sorted out how the Internet should be treated. He compared debates about the Internet to those about the chemical composition of ink and the design of the paper when the printer was invented, which missed the point. more»
Internet governance experts remain divided over last week's decision to extend the U.S. government's oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), with some calling it appropriate and others portraying it as unwise.
The strong sentiments on either side reflect a chronic, troubling tension that has enveloped ICANN since 1998, when it was formed to progressively absorb Internet management functions until then handled fully by the U.S. government. more»
Congress has turned its attention to ICANN again, holding two hearings, on opposite sides of the Capitol Building, in one week. The Senate Commerce Committee starts things off on Wednesday, September 20th with a hearing titled Internet Governance: The Future of ICANN. The House Commerce Committee follows on Thusday, September 21st with ICANN Internet Goverance: Is It Working? ICANN CEO Paul Twomey and the Department of Commerce's John Kneuer will be testifying at both hearings. more»
Internet governance experts argued on Wednesday for and against having the U.S. government hand over completely the technical coordination and management of the Internet's domain name system (DNS) to the private, non-profit ICANN this year.
Those in favor of completing this transition, which began in 1998, said the political price of having the U.S. involved in DNS management has become too high and holds back the international development of the Internet. ...Others warned that ICANN isn't yet ready to take on this task... more»
IT chiefs have been warned to prepare for the possibility of new corporate governance rules that would require them to keep records of voice-over-IP (VoIP) conversations alongside email, instant messaging and other forms of communication.
Speaking at the Symantec user event in San Francisco last week, Jeremy Burton, a senior vice-president at the security specialist, said, "Financial institutions in the US already need to keep voicemail because it is stored on disk. As soon as the regulators figure out that VoIP is a digital stream, they will probably try to force that to be kept as well." more»
The Internet governing body's decision to reject a new .xxx Internet domain for porn sites is a clear case of U.S. political interference in the Web's governance, the European Commission said on Thursday.
...The EU executive said the decision underscored the need to make ICANN independent quickly, following unsuccessful demands last year by a group of countries including the EU to make ICANN fully independent. more»
