U.N. summit revives concerns about Net control

A long-simmering dispute over whether the U.S. government has too much control over the Internet's underpinnings will heat up again next week at a United Nations summit in Greece.

Starting this weekend, about 1,200 diplomats and technology ministers will gather at a hotel in the outskirts of Athens to resume a debate that has often pitted the Bush administration and a handful of its Western allies against Brazil, India, China and African countries.

Officially, the inaugural meeting of the United Nations' Internet Governance Forum is designed to explore topics like free speech, security, spam and multilingualism.

But the diplomatic subtext is more pointed: Does the U.S. government have too much power to influence how Internet addresses are allocated and domain names are assigned? Are the changes in the relationship with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, that the U.S. Commerce Department announced a few weeks ago sufficient to allay international concerns? (Click here for PDF.)

The European Commission thinks they are. "I welcome the U.S. government's declared intention to grant more autonomy to ICANN," Viviane Reding, the EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, said on Oct. 2. "With our advice, we will contribute to this transition to ensure that it takes place transparently, reflecting the interests of industry and civil society alike."

So does the venerable Internet Society, which called it a "constructive step in the direction of private sector management" of the domain name system. (ICANN operates some Internet address and domain name functions under an agreement with the U.S.