In wading through all the commentary this week about the Bush administration’s dictate that the U.S. government shall retain ultimate control of the Internet’s 13 root servers for as long as it damn well pleases, I found myself muttering the same question over and over: Did anyone really expect anything different?
In wading through all the commentary this week about the Bush administration’s dictate that the U.S. government shall retain ultimate control of the Internet’s 13 root servers for as long as it damn well pleases, I found myself muttering the same question over and over:
Did anyone really expect anything different? . . . If so, we’ll need to add a new wing onto the Naiveté Hall of Fame.
Yes, it has been a written U.S. policy since 1998 that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and its international panel of directors would be set free of the oversight of the U.S. Commerce Department by 2006. The recent fiat – announced online two days before the long holiday weekend by an assistant secretary of the Commerce Department – does represent a direct and unilateral reversal. So I suppose that might constitute a basis for surprise in certain circles – certain woefully unaware circles.
But let’s not forget that Bill Clinton was president in 1998 and Sept. 11 was just another day on the calendar.
The current occupant of the White House is famous for having bragged: “In Texas, we don’t do nuance.” (My personal choice for the man’s most maddening utterance.)
Nor does he do international cooperation. While Bush might make a perfunctory pass at playing nice with other countries – when doing so suits his political purposes – there can be at this point in his administration no doubt as to the principles that govern U.S. relations abroad. Whether we’re talking about protecting the environment, choosing a nominee to represent the U.S. before the U.N., or most especially waging war in Iraq, this administration believes in nothing as fervently as it does America’s right to act alone and irrespective of foreign opinion.
And you expected them to relinquish the keys to the Internet?
The Bush administration would sooner establish a White House Debate Society and invite Kofi Annan to be its chair.
Yet the ICANN news was met with varying degrees of wonderment here and abroad.
“This seems like an extension of American security in the aftermath of” Sept. 11, a Denmark technology consultant told the Associated Press. “People will ask: ‘Do the Americans want to control the Internet?'”
Do we set off fireworks on the Fourth of July?
That the decision was all but preordained doesn’t address whether it was correct or not, of course. Did the U.S. do the right thing here? Even among those who expected no other decision from our government, there has been spirited debate as to whether the administration is justified in imposing its will on the Internet at large.
We’ll dismiss out of hand those who carp that because the Internet was invented here we get to lord over it in perpetuity. More rational defenders of the policy reversal argue that the U.S. is uniquely qualified to make decisions governing the operation of those root servers, and that the nation has too much at stake – both in terms of security and business interests – to risk the uncertainties of international oversight. (This camp will no doubt see a vindication of sorts in last week’s terrorist attack on London, tortured though that logic may be.)
Seems there are two ways for the layman to address this question:
One possibility is that the U.S. and only the U.S. can handle this job, particularly if protecting U.S. business and security interests is paramount.
The second is that the U.S. holds no such monopoly on will, wisdom or technical wherewithal, and that the international community has every bit as much at stake in keeping the Internet up and humming.
The first strikes me as an extraordinarily difficult proposition to defend – not to mention extraordinarily arrogant.
But all of this discussion about right and wrong is for naught because the question was never an open one.
There is chatter among the international Internet community to the effect that something must be done to get the U.S. to change course. They should save their breath and instead mark their calendars for Jan. 20, 2009.
A new administration, Republican or Democrat, may well see the matter differently.
Do you? The address is buzz@nww.com.
