Keep Internet Free. No Control by Theocrats or Autocrats

An important battle about who will control the Internet is currently being fought. On the one side is the USA. They want to keep the status quo (ICANN) and have succeeded to get the support of most of the global Internet community. On the other side is an amalgam of states that want as much control as possible in order to limit the Internet's power to undermine their own political regimes. This group comprises Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, and probably in a later stage also North Korea. Surprisingly, the European Union seems to drift away from supporting the USA and is shifting its policy on this issue towards the other side. But the American point of view openly received strong support from former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt. A few weeks before the UN sponsored World Summit on the Information Society, the EU is seeking backing from other countries, except from the USA, for a proposal to internationalise control of the Internet. Previously, the EU was aligned with the USA, which meant keeping the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as the body in charge of managing the Internet. The US Department of Commerce has a veto power of over ICANN’s decisions. The EU proposal was supported by all other countries, apart from the USA, at a preparatory conference in Geneva last month, according to EU spokesman Martin Selmayr. It is not that ICANN is not doing a good job but even ICANN has called for internationalisation, he added. David Gross, the State Department official in charge of America's international communications policy reacted saying, "It's a very shocking and profound change of the EU's position. The EU's proposal seems to represent an historic shift in the regulatory approach to the Internet from one that is based on private sector leadership to a government, top-down control of the Internet." The EU rejects American claims that the EU had changed direction in its policy. America (both Republicans and Democrats) and the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), an international trade group for the ICT industry, share the same point of view. But also some European politicians like Carl Bildt are against the EU initiative to internationalise control of the Internet. Carl Bildt was the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Balkans. He was Sweden’s Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994. He is an active member of Friends of Europe, a Brussels-based think-tank for EU policy analysis that is, according to its website, independent of the EU institutions and without national or political bias. "Keep the Internet free", he wrote in the International Herald Tribune also adding that: "It would be profoundly dan…