Internet Control

Who controls the internet ? No one, stupid. Its the largest confluence of people,ideas & technology. I wish the answer was that simple. If it was, there would be no fight between the US and rest of the world over internet supremacy .

CNN reports , " The very notion of "Internet governance" may seem an oxymoron to the 875 million users of the global computer network,But the United States, which gave birth to the Internet, maintains control of the system that matches easy-to-remember domain names with numerical addresses that computers can understand.

That worries countries like Brazil and Iran, which have pushed to transfer control to the United Nations or some other international body. Even the European Union, where much of the business community backs the current system, has taken swipes at the United States.The issue is expected to dominate the World Summit on the Information Society, which begins Wednesday in Tunis, Tunisia.But progress can't come without legal reform, business groups say. Internet access in the developing world will always remain expensive as long as governments allow their telecommunications monopolies to discourage competition, said Allen Miller, a senior vice president at the Information Technology Association of America.

"For most of these countries that are complaining about it, it's their own regulation and lack of liberalization that's preventing backbone providers from coming in," he said.But the United States has said repeatedly it does not intend to cede control of the domain-name system to a bureaucratic body that could stifle innovation.Many experts say the Internet needs less government involvement, not more."When governments talk about imposing their public policies on the Internet, unfortunately they don't typically mean, 'Let's protect human rights, individual rights, let's guarantee the freedom of the Internet,"' said Milton Mueller, a professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies.