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UK position on Internet governance

Posted on Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 6:34 PM by Andrew Chadwick

Nominet, the .uk domain name registry, has spoken out against the EU/Brazil/China/Iran position on Internet governance. It will be interesting to hear the position of the British and other European government spokespersons on this issue in the build up to the next WSIS meeting. I suspect that the British government may be much keener on the 'pro-regulation' perspective than Nominet, primarily because all of the pro-regulation options involve greater political involvement to a greater or lesser extent.

The UN working group on Internet governance has outlined four options (quoted from the BBC report):

'Option One - create a UN body known as the Global Internet Council that draws its members from governments and "other stakeholders" and takes over the US oversight role of Icann.
Option Two - no changes apart from strengthening Icann's Governmental Advisory Committee to become a forum for official debate on net issues.
Option Three - relegate Icann to a narrow technical role and set up an International Internet Council that sits outside the UN. US loses oversight of Icann
Option Four - create three new bodies. One to take over from Icann and look after the net's addressing system. One to be a debating chamber for governments, businesses and the public; and one to co-ordinate work on "internet-related public policy issues"'

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