KEY POINTS:
The contentious issue of taking away the United States Government's authority over the internet is on the table at an international meeting next week at which New Zealand will be arguing for the status quo.
Discussion of the US role is something of a surprise inclusion on the
agenda at the annual get-together of the internet Governance Forum, which gathers in Rio de Janeiro for three days from Monday.
It's an issue that has exercised participants at a number of earlier international gatherings and one which was thought to have been laid to rest. But with Brazil, the host of next week's IGF meeting, one of a handful of countries eager for change, perhaps the fact that it has reared its head again shouldn't be so surprising.
What would be surprising is anything concrete coming out of the Rio meeting that leads to dilution of US authority.
That's because the IGF is just a talking shop - although a United Nations-sanctioned body, it has no mandate other than to air internet governance issues.
Thank goodness for that, is what Keith Davidson, head of the body with oversight of the internet in New Zealand, is probably thinking.
Davidson, as executive director of internetNZ, will be at the Rio meeting to put the case for leaving things as they are.
So how are they, exactly?
Strictly speaking, the US rules the internet - it is, after all, an American creation. Icann, the body that controls the root servers at the internet's core, is contracted by the US Department of Commerce.
But by establishing Icann almost a decade ago, the US took the first step towards relinquishing control.
Icann, which is headed by New Zealander Peter Dengate Thrush, named chairman on Saturday, doesn't act in isolation. While it sets policy for website addresses and ensures that when a user types a URL into their web browser they end up at the right site, a couple of other bodies oversee the internet's technical development.
They are the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and the IAB (Internet Architecture Board), to which the IETF reports.
Most people would say this is a good arrangement. But Davidson says some "grumpy" governments - notably China, Saudi Arabia and Brazil - think the UN, through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), should be in charge.
And why not, you might ask?
Because, fears Davidson, that would burden the net with long-winded public policy-setting procedures that would slow its development. The ITU, for instance, conducts its main business at three-week meetings every four years.
If the internet was a mature technology, that might not matter. But in his view, having achieved maybe just a tenth of its potential, the heavy hand of bureaucracy is the last thing it needs.
Advocates of that view have a colourful cliche to draw on. They attribute advances in online payment systems and video streaming to the porn industry. For the IETF, the only test of technologies is whether they jeopardise internet security and stability - moral or ethical judgments don't come into it.
Saudi officials, if they had a say, might not be quite so hands-off.
With developments to come such as haptic technologies - by which a surgeon in Auckland, say, could use the internet to control instruments in an operating theatre in Apia - and self-stocking fridges that email the supermarket when your milk supply runs low, new rules and regulations could be stifling.
Far better, Davidson will be telling the IGF, for internet governance to follow the New Zealand model, which is shared by Canada. Our two regimes are "exemplars" of sensible regulation, he says, in which the country code manager (InternetNZ in our case) is left alone by the Government.
"As long as we persist with a process of open and transparent policy development for the .nz space, and continue to build consensus in the community for our policies, I don't think the Government would go near it," he says.
Indeed, the thinking of the Government and internetNZ on the issue confronting the IGF is identical.
Our most senior internet bureaucrat, Ministry of Economic Development ICT policy adviser Frank March, who happens to be internetNZ vice-president, says the Government supports the present Icann-US Government arrangement as the best guarantee of internet safety and security.
Not forever, though.
"In the longer term, we'd like to see more internationalisation of that relationship." Nor, for that matter, does Davidson think it a bad idea for the IGF to remind the US to keep Icann at arm's length.
"I think it's useful that the US Government continues to get some pressure to relinquish its authority over the core of the internet but I don't think it's going to boil over into public fisticuffs."
So long as the forum remembers it's just a talking shop.
* Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland-based technology journalist
Who rules the net?
* ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - oversees internet-related activities, including assignment of domain names and IP addresses.
* Set up in 1998 by the US Government, ICANN operates under contract to the Department of Commerce.
* Some governments believe the United Nations should be in charge of the internet.
* But defenders of the status quo say that would introduce cumbersome procedures and slow the net's development.
