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Just about five years ago, Internet nuptials made news. Today, no one bats an eyelid when young people blog their courtships with intimate pictures and anecdotes. On the World Wide Web things are getting increasingly personal. From exchange of ideas, goods and services we are moving towards an unprecedented human bonding.

The more we link up and converge, the more we depend on the complex process that makes it all possible. According to a 2006 Pew Internet Survey, top techno thinkers and stakeholders in the US believe that by 2020 easy wireless connectivity will cover the globe at extremely low cost, bringing hearts even closer. But will this connectivity be a matter of privilege or right? Will an average netizen have a degree of control over the medium of his destiny?

The UN sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) acknowledges the individual’s right to connect. “Communication is…the foundation of all social organisation. It is central to the information society,” says the 2005 WSIS declaration. But the assertion has more raw appeal than real authority because the UN is not in charge of Internet governance.   

Where is the control panel?

The master control lies in the US, where the Internet originated. A private entity called ICANN (International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has the top down control of the network of networks. It works like a private entity, but under the watchful eye of the US Department of Commerce and other government agencies (see graphic below). The US has so far defied the developing countries’ calls for democratising controls. 

To be fair to the ICANN, it provides equitable access to all, a policy that adds to the Internet’s terrific reach. The netizen has the cyberliberty to surf but conditions apply. Nations too exercise controls through regulations and ideological filters. Legally, governments can ban ‘objectionable’ sites or wall-up their vital interests but the US controlled network’s backbone and domain name systems (DNS) are beyond their reach.

The argument in favour of collective controls goes like this: The world has protocols for assigning radio frequencies and orbits to satellites. Global treaties fix the right of way in the open skies and the high seas. The protocols work irrespective of who invented the radio or rocket. Like other truly path-breaking technologies, the Internet too is shaping our future, and by that logic, it should be under shared control.

Democratising the Internet

A slow process of change has already begun. The 2005 WSIS Tunis Summit, attended by 32 governments, several prominent NGOs and the private sector, led to the formation of a multi-stakeholder International Governance Forum (IGF). ICANN CEO Paul Towmey described the formation of IGF as an “epoch-making process.” 

The UN recognises that the information and communication technologies (ICT) have the capacity to transform the world. Taking the new technologies, especially the ICT, to all is part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The UN has adopted several landmark resolutions and formed the Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID) but ICANN is still out of bounds for it.

Theoretically, it is possible to create a parallel Internet outside the US but that is not part of current global deliberations. The options offered so far broadly fall in two categories. The first is democratic control under a multilateral forum like the UN or its regionally elected autonomous bodies like the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The second category resembles the private but equally autonomous International Olympic Committee (IOC), run by elected office bearers.

Whatever the world settles for, the transfer of power is going to take a while. The stakes are high because of the netizens’ heightening engagement with the Internet. The world also needs to determine if the information highway will be used more for the delivery of humanitarian services and for bridging the digital divide or whether it will continue to swerve towards leisure and entertainment more than anything else.

Email authort: vmudgal@hindustantimes.com