WHOEVER
controls the internet’s address book has the power over life and death
on the network. Delete a domain name (economist.com, for example), and a
website can no longer be found and an e-mail no longer delivered. Such
authority currently falls under the auspices of America, but not for
much longer. On October 1st the federal government is scheduled to let
lapse a contract that gives it control over part of the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that
oversees the internet’s address system. Some—notably Ted Cruz, a
Republican senator from Texas, who seems willing to risk a shutdown of
the government to block the transfer—argue that this amounts to giving
away the internet. He says that the handover would allow governments in
autocratic countries such as China, Iran and Russia to have greater
control over what is available online. In fact, the opposite is true.
It
was the American government that helped bring ICANN to life in 1998, to
avoid having the internet overseen by a UN-type intergovernmental
organisation. Instead, it pushed for a “multi-stakeholder” model, which
gives not just governments, but all involved—including engineers,
network operators and even internet users—a say. Because there was no
precedent for this kind of organisation and because of a fear that ICANN
would lack legitimacy, America reserved to itself the right to veto
changes to the internet’s master list of addresses, but promised to pull
back once the new entity had proved itself.
When ICANN
was created this set-up made sense: the internet had a strongly American
flavour and most of its users were American. But now most netizens live
elsewhere—China and India are home to the greatest number of them—and
most traffic no longer passes over American cables. Following
revelations in 2013 that the National Security Agency had spied on
internet users around the world, pressure grew for America to fulfil its
pledge and relinquish control. In 2014 the government in Washington,
DC, duly said that it would do so, provided that ICANN was truly
independent and that it was able to resist power grabs by other
governments and commercial interests. After ICANN agreed to implement a
number of reforms earlier this year, the Obama administration decided to
give the organisation full responsibility.
It is right
to do so. The internet is meant to be global. But it is at risk of
splintering, whether as a result of national firewalls or rules
mandating that certain types of data need to be stored within a country.
Russia’s new data-localisation law, which came into effect on September
1st, for instance, requires that personal information from Russian
citizens is kept in databases located in Russia. America’s withdrawal
from its oversight role at ICANN will not stop the likes of China and
Russia from trying to impose their own rules on their patch of the
internet. But it will remove an obvious excuse for them to demand an
even greater say in how it is run.
In contrast, blocking
ICANN’s independence would weaken the consensus-driven model that has
propelled the internet forward. The thorniest issues related to the
internet, from cyber-security and hate speech to international data
flows, are a complex mixture of the political and the technical. ICANN
has its flaws, not least its hyper-bureaucratic processes, but it has
shown that the multi-stakeholder model can solve tricky problems such as
creating new suffixes for internet addresses. Almost 1.1 billion
websites are currently online; global internet traffic will surpass 1
zettabyte for the first time this year, the equivalent of 152m years of
high-definition video.
Yes ICANN
Mr
Cruz may well fail to block the handover at the end of this month. But
legal uncertainties would remain: Republicans could try to block the
transition process in court, forcing the American government to take
back control of ICANN (Congress has previously passed spending bills
that prohibit the administration from spending any money on it). That
would be the wrong fight to pick. Blocking ICANN’s independence would
not save the internet but hasten its Balkanisation.
