The Future of The Internet

One of the many fights brewing in the coming months is the battle to control the root of the Internet - specifically, the root servers operated by ICANN, an American-controlled non-profit company. Lawrence Lessig has some interesting answers in Foreign Policy:

FOREIGN POLICY: What is causing the rift between the United States and Europe over control of the Internet and what do you think will be the outcome of the summit in Tunis?

Lawrence Lessig: The largest cause of this rift is European distrust of the United States. It’s not particularly related to the Internet. The Europeans are eager to stand up to the Americans, and that I think has been produced by the last five years of U.S. foreign policy. It’s not really a cyberlaw problem.

From what we know right now, three different things could happen [at Tunis]. The Europeans could get it together and actually invoke the authority to exercise control over Internet governance, displacing the [Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or] ICANN position. The Americans could find a way to buy them off. Or, there could be a stalemate. But what’s interesting is, in 1998, there was no question of the Europeans taking over because there wasn’t the level of skepticism of the U.S. government, even though there was a lot of skepticism about ICANN at the time....

FP: Some say a shift away from ICANN would empower countries such as North Korea, China, and Iran to censor or control the Internet. Is that an accurate criticism?

LL: The ability to facilitate censorship is independent of the question of who owns the roots. Say we have the system we have now and China wants to censor it. It builds a list of IP addresses it won’t serve content to or won’t allow to be shown on its servers, and then it basically uses that list to filter all IP packets that come across the Chinese network. If the world had two roots, one China-controlled and one U.S.-controlled, then it would be one step simpler for China to censor because it could filter its own root. But it would still have to do the same things it does now with regard to the U.S. root content. The technology you’re using to censor is not necessarily tied to the architecture of the root name.