BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) – A U.N. panel created to recommend how the Internet should be run in the future has failed to reach consensus but did agree that no single country should dominate.

The United States stated two weeks ago that it intended to maintain control over the computers that serve as the Internet’s principal traffic cops.

In a report released Thursday, the U.N. panel outlined four possible options for the future of Internet governance for world leaders to consider at a November “Information Society” summit.

They failed to reach consensus? Then how did they agree that no single country should dominate. And the US should maintain control…hand it over to the UN and the Internet, as we know it, will cease to be.

One option would largely keep the current system intact, with a U.S.-based non-profit organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, continuing to handle basic policies over Internet addresses.

At the other end, ICANN would be revamped and new international agencies formed under the auspices of the United Nations.

“In the end it will be up to governments, if at all, to decide if there will be any change,” said Markus Kummer, executive director of the U.N. Working Group on Internet Governance, which issued the report.

The 40 members of the panel hailed from around the world and included representatives from business, academia and government.

World leaders who convened in December 2003 for the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva couldn’t agree on a structure for Internet governance.

Working Group on Internet Governance?? So the committee has a name? I bet they battled and debated for months over this name too. Meeting after wasted meeting, fancy notes and “concensus” building” BS just over this. Red tape in it’s glory…

Some countries were satisfied with the current arrangement, while others, particularly developing ones, wanted to wrest control from ICANN and place it with an intergovernmental group, possibly under the United Nations.

Yeah sure. The developing countries certainly want to take over the Internet. After all, they have the equipment and brains to do so right?

Though the group could not agree on a single model, it does recommend the creation of a new global forum for governments, industry and others to discuss key issues such as spam and cybercrime – areas not currently handled by ICANN.

The formation of yet another committee for the UN? They like to have lots of groups in action…keeps them thinking they are important. And the UN couldn’t stop spam, online criminal activity…in fact they would probably make it worse.

The panel recommended a larger international role for “governance arrangements,” Kummer said, and participants felt no one country should dominate.

He stressed the sentiment dates back to the Geneva summit and was not meant as an attack on the United States or a direct response to the U.S. Department of Commerce statement two weeks ago that it intends to keep ultimate authority for authorizing changes to the list of Internet suffixes, such as “.com.”

The United States historically has played that role because it funded much of the Internet’s early development.

Of course someone has to speak and state “This isn’t anything against the United States…” The only reason they say this is to cover their asses in case the US maintains control. (It will too.) The US did more than just fund the Internet’s development. We provided the structure, equipment and knowledge to get it to where it is today. No thanks to Al Gore needed.

ICANN chief executive Paul Twomey said the report confirmed his organization’s role.

“If the Internet was a postal system, what we ensure is that the addresses on the letters work,” he said. “We don’t think we’re a regulator. We think we’re a technical co-ordinator.”

Twomey said ICANN had a narrow technical coordination role for a particular layer of the Internet – specifically domain names and the numeric Internet Protocol addresses used to identify specific computers.

But ICANN critics believe the organization has drifted beyond its technical mandate. They have cited ICANN’s growing budget and its involvement in creating procedures for resolving trademark dispute as examples.

Paul Kane, chairman of a Brussels-based coalition of domain name administrators called the Council of European and National Top-Level Domain Registries, said the report told ICANN diplomatically that it needed to narrow its focus.

Can we all see what would happen if a small African country took over the ICANN role for the Internet? It would fall apart. As the Internet grows, there will be a need for more budget money to cover the costs involved with keeping up. It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to figure that out.

Others have expressed concerns that ICANN remains too close to the U.S. government, which gave ICANN its authority in 1998 but retains veto power.

Developing countries have been frustrated that Western countries that got on the Internet first gobbled up most of the available addresses required for computers to connect, leaving developing nations to share a limited supply.

And some countries want faster approval of domain names in non-English characters – China even threatened a few years ago to split the Internet in two and set up its own naming system for Chinese.

Gobbled up addies? Well had the developing countries had computers in the first place this wouldn’t have been an issue now would it? Oh yeah, and if the people had jobs and worked for a living, they could have afforded to buy .com addies themselves. These nations need to get food on the tables, shelter and clothing on the backs of their people before they start complaining about the Internet.
And China could start it’s own Internet. After all, they knock down anyone who even attempts to use it as a form of free speech. Same with more than half of those “developing” nations.