Berners-Lee...ICANN
Brian Trumbore
President/Editor, StocksandNews.com

Smithsonian magazine is celebrating its 35th anniversary and among its "35 people who made a difference" over this period was Tim Berners-Lee, the man who developed the World Wide Web.

A group of California academics had first come up with a system in the late 1960s that employed "hypertext" to link computers with one another through a network, the Internet; but it was Berners-Lee who took it a crucial step further when in the fall of 1990, he wrote some software making it easier for physicists, in his case, to share results by interlinking documents so that all the information could be shared. Others had thought of this, but it was Berners-Lee who was the first to actually implement it.

[In other words, the Web is built over the Internet.]

Berners-Lee, who was working at a physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, CERN, first considered calling his work Information Mesh, or Mine of Information, but settled on World Wide Web. By the summer of 1991, he then made the critical decision to put his software on the Internet for free.

But as the Web took off, there was debate within CERN on whether or not to profit from it and it was Berners-Lee who made another crucial decision in saying 'no.' As Smithsonian's Tom Standage writes:

"Without an open standard, (Berners-Lee) reasoned, there would end up being several incompatible forms of Internet media, backed by Microsoft, AOL and others. Making the Web royalty- free made it more attractive than any proprietary alternative. 'Without that, it never would have happened,' he says."

Berners-Lee, 50, is now at M.I.T. Tom Standage:

"To have changed the world once would be enough for most inventors, but Berners-Lee still regards the Web as a work in progress. 'The Web is not done,' he says. One area where there is room for improvement is in making the Web a two-way medium, as it was in its earliest days: the original Web browser was also an editor (it not only displayed pages, but also let the user alter them), but this feature was not included in subsequent browsers as the Web went mainstream. Berners-Lee regards the current mania for Weblogs and wikis (pages anyone can edit) as a step in the right direction. 'One of the things that makes wikis and blogs attractive is that everybody is able to express themselves,' he says. But there is still room to make them easier to use, he believes."

But switching gears, a debate over who actually controls the Internet is heating up as a UN conference in mid-November in Tunisia picks up where a 2003 one left off.

Currently, the United States exercises control. Back in 1998, it was decided that the system would be managed by the non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which was established by the U.S. Department of Commerce, with the headquarters in Marina del Rey, California.

ICANN oversees Web domains and addresses, a function that is obviously critical. But other nations have been increasingly vocal, saying one country shouldn't control it all, which is why many seek an international body, through a multi-lateral treaty, within the UN.

A key EU spokesperson on the topic recently reversed previous EU opinion and said the U.S. should be removed from its oversight role of ICANN, though far from all European Union member nations agree.

One controversy that came to light recently didn't help matters. ICANN was going to seek establishment of a separate '.xxx' domain name for all pornographic sites, but the Commerce Department withdrew its support; a sign to some the U.S. government still exhibited ultimate control.

Of course at the same time, China has been proving it can control what its own people see by blocking certain Web sites.

In the November / December issue of Foreign Affairs, reporter Kenneth Neil Cukier elaborates on some of the above.

The first phase of the UN's World Summit on the Information Society was held in December 2003 in Geneva, at which time China called for the creation of a new international treaty organization, while France wanted an intergovernmental approach but one involving only an elite group of democratic nations. [Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe took the opportunity to weigh in back then, calling the existing system of Internet governance a form of neocolonialism.]

Cukier writes, "One of the most cherished myths of cyberspace is that the Internet is totally decentralized and inherently uncontrollable. Like all myths, this one is based on a bit of truth and a heavy does of wishful thinking." For example, "In four critical areas?it requires oversight and coordination in order to operate smoothly."

"First, there are domain names, such as www.foreignaffairs.org. Somebody must decide who will operate the database of generic names ending with suffixes such as '.com,'' .net,' and others? Also, someone must appoint the operators of two-letter country- code suffixes (such as '.cn,' for China).

"Second, there are Internet Protocol numbers, the up-to-12-digit codes, invisible to users, that every machine on the network needs to have in order to be recognized by other machines?

[Ed. note: we are rapidly running out of these numbers and the Internet needs to be upgraded.]

"Third are what are called root servers. Some form of control is needed in the actual machines that make the domain name system work. When users visit Web sites or send e-mail, big computers known as root servers match the domain names with their corresponding Internet Protocol numbers in a matter of milliseconds. The database is the world's most important Rolodex. Yet due to a technical hiccup that occurred when the network was young, there can be only 13 root servers, some of which provide data to mirror sites around the world?.Today, ten root servers are operated from the United States and one each from Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Tokyo.

"Fourth and finally, there are technical standards that must be formally established and coordinated to ensure the Internet's interoperability?.everything from how routers send traffic to parameters so that video flows smoothly. Ultimately, the standards let the Internet evolve."

So you can see that with the technical underpinnings being what they are, and despite the open network that operates like an open society, the domain name system remains the central chokepoint where control can be exercised.

One of the founders of the Internet itself back in the 1960s was Jon Postel, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California. He ended up managing the Internet for 30 years on behalf of the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency, which funded the Net's initial development. Postel was the one who handed out domain names, including country-codes.

Kenneth Cukier:

"By the mid-1990s, however, it became clear to the small coterie of officials in the United States and elsewhere who were aware of the matter that the Internet could no longer be administered by a single individual. But who or what would replace him?"

It was the Clinton administration that then brokered a bitter compromise and established ICANN in 1998. [It was because of these negotiations that Al Gore would feel compelled to over- hype his own role.] It turns out the process was so intense, Postel suffered a heart attack and "never lived to see the birth of the successor organization he was instrumental in creating."

ICANN's private-sector status has helped restrict political interference. But in 2002, members of the Federal Communications Commission were asked by China's Ministry of Information Industry why Taiwan had been granted a two-letter domain, '.tw.' That proved to be the start of the controversy that brings us to today. And it doesn't help that in this global debate, many nations have used the United States' action in Iraq as yet another example of American unilateralism.

Kenneth Cukier:

"What would prevent Washington, they (argue), from one day choosing, say, to knock Iran off the Internet by simply deleting its two-letter moniker, '.ir,' from the domain name system? Surely the Internet ought to be managed by the international community rather than a single nation."

But as the second phase of talks is about to get underway, recently the Commerce Department issued a short statement saying the United States would retain its authority over ICANN. The U.S., though, is acknowledging that countries have the right to control their own two-letter domains, though this will still present problems such as with Taiwan's '.tw.' Most importantly, though, is maintaining control of the technical infrastructure and keeping this out of the hands of politicians and bureaucrats.

Kenneth Cukier concludes:

"Ultimately, what is playing out is a clash of perspectives. The U.S. government saw the creation of ICANN as the voluntary relinquishing of a critical source of power in the digital age; others saw it as a clever way for Washington to maintain its hegemony by placing Internet governance in the U.S. private sector. Foreign critics think a shift to multilateral intergovernmental control would mark a step toward enlightened global democracy; Washington thinks it would constitute a step back in time, toward state-regulated telecommunications. Whether and how these perspectives are bridged will determine the future of a global resource that nearly all of us have come to take for granted."

Additional Source: Christopher Rhoads / Wall Street Journal

Brian Trumbore

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