Globe and Mail Update Published on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006 7:27AM EST Last updated on Tuesday, Apr. 07, 2009 1:46AM EDT
A top European Union official praised the United States' commitment to pull back from its historic oversight of the Internet as a worldwide conference on the network's future opened yesterday in Greece.
EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding said she hopes last month's deal will lead to eventual independence for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the non-profit agency in charge of the Internet's key traffic-management technologies.
"We are very satisfied with the work of ICANN. What Europe was objecting to was the government oversight of ICANN," Ms. Reding said. "I think ICANN is doing a perfectly good job as it is. Just leave it alone."
Ahead of a United Nations summit on information technology last year, Europe insisted that the U.S. government cede responsibility of policing the Internet to some sort of new combination of governments and the private sector. The United States ultimately kept sole control -- through ICANN -- and agreed to this week's forum instead.
Last month, the U.S. Commerce Department said it will retain oversight of ICANN for another three years, although it agreed to be less actively engaged.
Ms. Reding called that "the first step in the right direction." The United States and other governments, she added, should focus instead on threats like spam and cybercrime.
Some 1,200 academics, policy makers, technology experts, user representatives and other delegates are attending the Internet Governance Forum, which runs through Thursday in the resort of Vouliagmeni, near Athens. Discussion topics are expected to include ways to ease current U.S. control of the Internet and improve international co-operation to fight Internet crimes like banking fraud and child pornography.
Event organizers said the forum will not make recommendations but is aimed purely at starting a long-term dialogue and making such discussions more inclusive.
In an interview Friday, the UN's top Internet official, Nitin Desai, predicted that Asia will drive a massive on-line expansion by the end of the decade, propelled by improved cellphone technology and expansion of computer-sharing.
"The big expansion in the Internet in the next five years is going to take place in developing countries," Mr. Desai said. "A lot of it in countries which are not English speaking . . . where people don't even know the Latin alphabet, for instance, China." AP
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