A travesty cannot be made something genuine, even by popularity, but then in the United Nations truth comes second to fiction. Two years after meeting in Tunisia to build a consensus on how best to enact a UN mandate over the internet, the World Summit on the Information Society reconvened last month in the same north African police state, led by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, for another go. If it was assumed that the transnational bureaucracy would be chastened after indictments for corruption leading to the sustentation of Saddam Hussein, methodical abuse in protectorates, neo-Nazi merchandise commemorating Gaza's Arab settlement — well, what is thought sordid and disqualifying elsewhere is just another rowdy olio in the year-round production at Turtle Bay.
American journalist Claudia Rosett, who might be Holmes if the UN Secretariat had nearly the competence of Moriarty, reported on the summit in Tunis. One hundred seventy-five countries were represented; in three days 40 statements were delivered and documented. The event's collective declaration is sinuous but transparent: American control of the internet's structure and delegation presents an obstacle to "poverty eradication strategies" and "digital solidarity" among "developing nations" and "development partners." What does the WSIS want? Divestiture.
The internet is, like most of modernity, deceptively simple. Two years ago I had the opportunity to choose another company from whom the domain name "figureconcord.com" would be leased — at the same time I switched this website's hosting company. I thought I would manually effect the change myself. I had a hell of a time doing it, confronted by a substructure far more involuted than a casual operator's experience, which is like opening a shutter and gazing through a window. Yes, what is all that, anyway?
As those of us with a working comprehension know, a computer whose content can be accessed remotely is identified by a unique, twelve-digit address. For ease of use, a given computer can be reached through an alphanumeric title. These titles are domains, which carry either "top-level" or "country-code" domains such as ".com" or ".us," respectively. These are leased to individuals by commercial and state entities that have been recognized by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and IANA only, since a domain name ("figureconcord.com") is only useful if it points to one source of content (this website), just as you expect the phone to ring at a particular residence when you dial a number. IANA submits directories to ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers which, while no longer subjacent to the United States Department of Commerce, fulfills a sole-sourced contract. The internet's originator, therefore, is its arbiter.
"Many countries, privately, felt that the US was being generous in sharing the internet with the rest of the world," wrote Dr. Peng Hwa Ang, a professor from oligarchical Singapore, in a riposte to Rosett. But, Dr. Ang warned, countries supportive of the WSIS would tolerate the spirit of giving for only so long before they began a little "pushback." Why? Simple, reasoned Ang. "The US did not have to do an 'internet grab' because it already had the internet in its hands." Catch that? One who has must be receptive to those who do not and wish to take from him — even though he will never quite understand, since he can't exactly take from himself.
WSIS/UN usurpation is based on an allegation of worldwide ownership. The claim has an irredentist ring to it, which makes it all the more unctuous. The internet is almost entirely a product of the American demiurge, from defense network to web browser. What of foreign contributors? One may as well put forward that because of seminal contributions to aviation from Raymond Saulnier, Anthony Fokker, Hans von Ohain, Frank Whittle and Nikolai Zhukovsky, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey should cede LaGuardia Airport. The internet can be confused or misrepresented as a shared enterprise only because the medium transcends hitherto conceived modes of communication and production, and that the United States has invited the rest of the world to contribute and profit.
On that, it is not the fault of, say, the people living in dictatorships that full participation is impossible. Popular use of the internet is anathema to tyrants. Have you heard about the recently jailed Egyptian blogger? — for the first time in human history, a man could beam from Cairo to every last corner of the earth all things unseemly about his pharaoh (presently strongman Hosni Mubarak). Or have you heard about the thousands of Iranians skirting Tehran's repression, the most capable and articulate libertarian dissidents today? An unanticipated democratist windfall places the matter in terms of morality, liberty; national and collective security. In wartime, the internet is no different a proprietary technology than materiel, no less profound to human liberty than the Gutenberg Bible. The claim of any other party to assume control should only be worth the measure of capital it has expended under the foregoing terms.
How about these requirements for a country's sovereign control of domains: Receive from Freedom House or equivalent the highest possible grades for civil and political liberties for fifty consecutive years, then submit to the United States Department of the Treasury a $2 billion security deposit, then sign an affidavit pledging to encourage and preserve at minimum twelve thousand private websites which unequivocally maintain that the current head-of-state is a horse's ass.
Until that is worked out, the internet is a most valuable asset of the free world, a potent weapon against tyranny — and it must be left in American hands.