« VOIP hearing coverage | Main | Birth of the Metaweb »

December 8, 2003

The Battle of ICANN

The New York Times reports that, as expected, ICANN's failure is encouraging the UN to attempt a governmental takeover of the Internet:

"Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh, though, said he planned to propose that Icann be placed under the umbrella of a United Nations communications task force that gives equal status to government, private sector and nongovernmental organizations."

It's worrisome that ICANN insiders still think the best response is to insist that ICANN is just a boring technical coordination body.  If that were the case, ICANN wouldn't have nearly the influence, visibility, and funding level it enjoys.  The Times story leads off by calling ICANN "the Internet's semi-official governing body," which isn't correct but is sufficiently well-accepted that it hardly matters. 

--------

Posted by Kevin Werbach at December 8, 2003 9:17 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:

Comments

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?