Tuesday, Nov 13, 2007    Text size: 

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had another high-priority topic in mind for the IGF, however: protecting children from harmful online content.

“One particular area of hope, but also concern, is the relationship of children and young people with the Internet,” Ban said in a statement. “The Internet has opened new doors to them, to knowledge and culture. Yet, it can also present a threat to their safety. The program for this year’s meeting has a strong focus on the protection of children, and I hope that it will contribute to making them safer.”

It wasn’t clear from his statement whether Ban was referring to sexual predators targeting children via chat rooms and social networking sites, the harm done to children by viewing adult content, or both. One of Ban’s subordinates at the U.N., however, provided his own personal spin on the Secretary-General’s remarks.

“We defend freedom but some regulatory mechanisms are needed,” said U.N. Undersecretary-General Sha Zukang, who read Ban’s statement at a press conference before adding his own thoughts. “Freedom does not mean that we can do whatever we like. Is there anyone who would tolerate the use of the Internet for terrorism or to send pornography to our children?”

While Ban said that the U.N. “does not have a role in managing the Internet,” he said that the U.N. welcomed “the opportunity to provide, through this forum, a platform that helps to ensure the Internet’s global reach.”

Ban also said that while it was not the IGF’s role to make policy decisions, the forum provided the opportunity for participants to meet “as equals, not to make decisions or negotiate, but to discuss, exchange information and share good practices.”

Asked if he was concerned that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) might respond to governmental and U.N. pressure by instituting policies regulating what sort of content webmasters may place on their sites, Free Speech Coalition Chairman Jeffrey Douglas told XBIZ “fortunately, that is virtually impossible, given the structure of ICANN.”

“ICANN has no capacity to address content,” Douglas said. “The closest they could get was issuing guidelines, as we saw with .XXX, and even then they were not involved in establishing those guidelines. They didn’t want to get involved in issues of content. ICANN is really not structured to deal with content, even if they wanted to — and they do not want to.”

Within the circles of the thousands of government and private sector participants of the IGF, the discussion heading into this week’s meeting largely focused on U.S. control over critical Internet infrastructure, including the country’s perceived control over ICANN, which is seen by many as an American entity despite its international membership.

The U.S. government, which footed the lion’s share of the bill for early technological development of the Internet, has veto power over ICANN, which was selected in 1998 to administer domain name policies.

The IGF itself represents a compromise on the subject of U.S. Internet control; the organization was created by agreement of various world leaders at the 2005 U.N. “World Summit on the Information Society” held in Tunis, Tunisia. At that meeting and a previous meeting in 2003, many governments argued staunchly that control of the Internet must be removed from American hands.

Some governments were not satisfied by the creation of the IGF, and are seeking a more substantive declaration of Internet independence from the U.S. — something along the lines of a negotiated agreement on the next step in further reducing U.S. control of the Internet.

Others have noted that the document that created the IGF at the Tunis meeting specified that the IGF was not a policy-making body, and cautioned that people should keep their expectations for the Rio meeting in check.

Theresa Swinehart, ICANN’s vice president for global and strategic partnership, said that ICANN welcomes the discussion over its role in the realm of domain names and other areas, so long as they do not expecting specific actions to be taken on the part of ICANN as a result.

“It’s fine to have the panel, and it’s fine to have the discussions about it,” Swinehart said. “But for the forum to start going into a direction that ends up coming out with recommendations, it would result in becoming four days of negotiating text. “That would defeat the purpose. You lose the entire benefit of information sharing. People would hold back on what they are saying.”

For more information on the IGF, and for transcripts from the meetings taking place in Rio this week, visit IntGovForum.org