[ga] The Debate over Internet Governance

[Sotiris Sotiropoulos <sotiris@hermesnetwork.com>]

As many of us will recall the oft repeated statements by Dave Crocker, Kent
Crispin, and a few others on the topic of Internet Governance and ICANN, I
thought it would be interesting to send following quote and its source link:

"At some level, even those most wary of formal governance for the internet
recognize the need for central administration of some of the internet’s
technical aspects.  The assignment of IP addresses represents one such widely
recognized aspect.  What makes this debate so engaging and controversial is
that the distinction between technical coordination and public policy-making
in practice is much less clear than in theory.  The blurring of this
distinction has created an opportunity for broad reflection on what kind of
decision-making processes there should be in cyberspace. Does responsibility
for assigning names and numbers imply the power to create a dispute resolution
system?  Does it also imply the power to sanction those who do not follow
mandated procedure by denying them a domain name?  If the answer to both
questions is necessarily yes, then who should have a voice in creating the
policies the internet community will be made to follow and in determining
questions that have increasingly large political and financial implications."

For more: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/is99/governance/introduction.html

I highly recommend the interviews listed in the left menu.  Considering the
recent outright shift from technical to policy coordination of ICANN as a
whole, I think it will make interesting reading... esp. the one with Joe Sims.

Sincerely,

Sotiris Sotiropoulos

P.S. Will the results for the election of the GA's representative for the NC's
UDRP Task Force be announced today?

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