Authoritarian governments make a bid to control the Internet.

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203609204574312194225241368.html


   - [image: The Wall Street Journal]


   - OPINION: INFORMATION
AGE<http://online.wsj.com/public/search?article-doc-type=%7BInformation+Age%7D&HEADER_TEXT=information+age>
   - JULY 26, 2009, 7:51 P.M. ET

What’s Chinese for .limitedgovernment? Authoritarian governments make a bid
to control the Internet.

   -  By L. GORDON CROVITZ

[image: Columnist's name]

One of the marvels of the Internet is that it is self-governing, with
private groups of engineers and technology companies doing their best to
keep it up and running without political interference. Many countries around
the world censor how their citizens access the Web, but governance of the
Internet itself has been left to technologists and their largely libertarian
instincts.

This happy state of affairs could be close to an end. There are now more
Internet users in China than in any other country, and the fastest growing
group of new users online is from non-English- speaking developing
countries. This has led to a well-meaning plan to reorient the Web toward
these users. But it could result in authoritarian governments insisting on
more influence.

At issue is a key shift in the approach of Icann, the California-based
nonprofit that maintains the directory of Internet addresses. Icann, which
stands for Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, ultimately reports
to the U.S. Commerce Department, though it has numerous advisory groups from
other countries and from free-speech and other advocacy groups. It plans to
open the door to many new Web addresses and to give better access to
non-English-language users.

Next spring, Icann is set to expand Web addresses beyond the familiar .com,
.org and .edu to domains that would include the names of industries,
companies and political movements. Under its proposed rules, anyone who
could afford the almost $200,000 registration fee should be able to start a
domain. Icann would also permit top-level domains in non-Latin alphabets.
This means Internet addresses in languages such as Chinese, Arabic and
Farsi.

This will make the Web more accessible to non-English-speakers but also will
lead to tricky issues, such as whether dissidents in China or Iran will be
permitted to have their own dot-addresses. How would Beijing respond to a
Chinese-language domain that translates into .democracy or
.limitedgovernment, perhaps hosted by computers in Taipei or Vancouver?

This prospect could explain why Beijing recently had a top bureaucrat engage
with Icann for the first time since 2001. Governments tend to be less
concerned when only their better-educated, more English-fluent citizens have
access to information. When I ran the English-language Far Eastern Economic
Review magazine in the 1990s, it was rarely blacklisted in China for its
reporting, but issues were routinely banned when they included political
cartoons featuring Chinese government officials.

The combination of more domains in more languages could put unprecedented
pressures on a system under which Web addresses are interoperable only
because all governments agree that Icann controls the directory.

Rebecca MacKinnon, a Web researcher writing a book about lessons from China
on Internet freedom, praises Icann for being influenced by nongovernmental
groups, not just governments. “The U.N. model of Internet governance is
highly unsatisfactory from a human-rights and free-expression point of view
for obvious reasons,” she told me. “The Chinese and the Iranians and various
other authoritarian countries will insist on standards and rules that make
dissent more difficult, destroy the possibility of anonymity, and facilitate
surveillance.”

Up to now, governments have been largely hands-off. An amusing example is
the dispute over the domain www.newzealand.com. The queen of England, “in
right of her Government in New Zealand, as Trustee for the Citizens,
Organizations and State of New Zealand,” brought an action in 2002 against a
Seattle-based company called Virtual Countries Inc. that had registered the
Web address. The queen argued that her antipodean country should have
control over its own .com name. This may sound reasonable, but she lost. New
Zealand had to buy the .com address for $500,000.

Will governments like China’s be as philosophical about Internet domain
decisions they don’t like?

Countries such as China, Russia and Iran have long argued that it’s wrong
for Icann to report to the U.S. government. Any alternative to the light
control exerted by the U.S. government could put the Web on a slippery
course toward more control. This is one reason efforts by these countries to
politicize Icann have failed in the past.

“I think the question here is not about which governments have the moral
right to lead Internet governance over others,” Ms. MacKinnon argues, “but
about whether it’s appropriate that Internet governance should be the sole
province of governments, many of which do not arguably represent the
interests of Internet users in their countries because they were not
democratically elected.”

It’s tempting to dismiss Internet idealists, but the Web has been a powerful
force for individual expression, especially in parts of the world where free
speech had been limited to those who could afford it. Groups like Icann will
have their hands full trying to keep controlling governments from
restricting freedom of the Internet.
-- 
Rebecca MacKinnon
Open Society Fellow | Co-founder, GlobalVoicesOnline.org
Assistant Professor, Journalism & Media Studies Centre, University of Hong
Kong

UK: +44-7759-863406
USA: +1-617-939-3493
HK: +852-6334-8843
Mainland China: +86-13710820364

E-mail: rebecca.mackinnon at gmail.com
Blog: http://RConversation.blogs.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rmack
Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/rebeccamack
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