The announcement comes a little more than a month after David Gross, the U.S. State Department’s coordinator for international communications and information policy, rejected demands from the European Union, the United Nations and several foreign countries to be granted more decision-making power and a larger role in overseeing the Internet.
The IGP report is expected to take center stage at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which begins Nov.16 in Tunis, Tunisia.
In “Political Oversight of ICANN,” the authors argue that the U.S. should give up its political control of the Internet, claiming Internet security is actually hurt by allowing the country sovereign rule over ICANN’s policies.
“It is a myth that U.S. oversight is a completely neutral and intrinsically harmless,” write the authors, which includes professors Milton Mueller from Syracuse University and Hans Klein from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
As a key example, the report looks at ICANN’s widely publicized involvement in delaying the creation of a .XXX domain, which coincided with considerable pressure from groups close the Bush Administraion.
Instead, the authors suggest many governments should have a hand in developing ICANN policy, and plan to present a lengthy suggested process on reformulating the current system at the World Summit.
