India wants freedom from U.S. hold over Net governance
By agencies   |   Tuesday, 16 August 2005, 19:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: India wants freedom from the U.S. hegemony over the Internet. An assertive India has called for an “immediate changeover of the U.S. dominated governance of the Internet to an international body which is inter-governmental, multilateral and multistakeholder in nature. India’s fight for freedom from the U.S. hold over the Internet is backed by Brazil and China, among other developing nations, a report in financial daily Economic Times said. These countries have suggested UN organizations like International Telecommunication Union (ITU) UNESCO and the United Nations Development Program to take over the reins from the Internet Corporation for Assigned names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is a private organization working under an MoU with the U.S. government. The MoU is to expire in September 2006, but India is of the opinion that the new mechanism for control of the internet governance should become functional before 2006 on the heels of the U.S. Department of Commerce statement last that the U.S. intends to retain control over Internets root servers indefinitely. The American statement of intent was in response to four different models mooted by the United Nations to govern the net-all of which challenge total control by the U.S. At present ICANN is the only body that has control over the Internet infrastructure such as voluntaryroot servers, regional Internet address registries, and domain name registries. It allots Internet protocol addresses to regional Internet registries, which in turn allot blocks of such addresses to ISPs and users. This leads to non-contiguous allocation of IP address causing huge routing tables that eat into resources meant for net traffic. India hopes that the new mechanism, to be finalized in the second phase of meetings of the UN working group on Internet governance in Tunis in November, would pave way for better and more democratic management of the net: putting an end to huge routing tables that consume network resources, making way for multi-lingual domain names, dispersion of regional root servers and a global action plan to contain cyber crime. In its comment, India has reiterated that ICANNs incorporation means it would always be subject to U.S. law, which in turn would introduce an “asymmetric role” of the U.S. government in relation to the role of other governments.

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