Who should run the internet?

Internet governance is under attack; it may have to mend its ways to survive
Oct 1st 2011

Excerpt:
The multi-stakeholder approach dates from the beginnings of the internet. Its founding fathers believed that more openness would be both more secure and better for innovation. What is more, since the internet is a network of independent networks, it is hard to construct a form of governance that allows anyone to dictate things from the top.

Until the early 2000s most governments were happy—at least in Western countries where most internet users lived. They had no problem with the network’s standards being set by such organisations as the Internet Engineering Task Force, which is open to everybody. Nor did governments balk when America in 1998 set up the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), also based on the multi-stakeholder model, to manage the internet’s core: its address system.

Yet as the internet has become a global medium attitudes have changed. At the World Summit on the Information Society 2005 in Tunis, many participants pushed for the UN and one of its agencies, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which co-ordinates the radio spectrum among other things, to take over the running of the internet. The effort was resisted by America and other Western countries. The compromise included the creation of the IGF. the rest