An international dispute over U.S. control of the Internet appears unlikely to be resolved even as state envoys, regulators and technology experts convene next week to discuss the network’s future.
“Such negotiations are difficult … this will take time. 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.
The U.S.
Commerce Department retains oversight over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization that handles network-address issues. The department recently extended those conditions for another three years, but promised to be less actively engaged with
ICANN.
“Concerning ICANN … we believe, like the
European Union, it should slowly become independent, and not to be subject any government influence,” Liapis said. “We would like to see ICANN become autonomous and work under the rules of the free market. And I think that is the direction we are headed.”
Some 1,200 people are due to attend the Athens forum. Academics, policy makers and other delegates will attend separate discussion sessions on Internet openness, security, diversity and access.
The Athens forum’s chief organizer, Nitin Desai, has urged greater attention on efforts to create more domain names in non-Latin characters, warning that the Internet could break up unless the problem is resolved.
“The expansion of the Internet is going to take place in the developing world … In five years from now, they’re will be many, many more users in Asia than in Europe and North America,” Desai said in an Oct. 9 speech in London.
“Most Chinese people do not know the Latin alphabet … There’ll be a point at which Chinese people will say we have to have a Chinese system and they will set up a different system,” said Desai, a special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan.
Liapis said he hoped the conference would have a positive domestic effect in Greece, where broadband penetration is just over 3 percent, the lowest rate in the EU excluding countries that joined in 2004.
“Hopefully people will realize that the Web is not just for kids and playing games, and understand that it is the main driving force of development in many fields including education and commerce.”
