Dec. 30 2010
Ian Munroe, CTV.ca News
Autocratic governments like China and Iran attended the meeting, as did several democratic ones. Despite protests by Portugal and the United States, they voted to staff a working group on the future of the Internet Governance Forum -- an important theatre of discussion on matters of cyberspace -- by governments alone.
The seemingly arcane move reverberated through a community of technical experts, academics and civil society groups who felt they had been unfairly excluded.
Fourteen technical organizations that help oversee how cyberspace runs wrote an open letter asking the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD) to reverse its decision. Meanwhile the Internet Society, an umbrella group that helps manage technical standards online, posted a petition to its website in protest.
"A significant fuss has been kicked up about it," said Byron Holland, president and CEO of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, which manages the .ca domain.
Even Google waded into the fray. Vint Cerf, a vice-president at the online behemoth and one of the pioneers of the Internet, added his name to the petition, alongside 2,600 others. He also attacked the UN decision in a Dec. 17 blog post on Google's website.
"We don't believe governments should be allowed to grant themselves a monopoly on Internet governance," Cerf wrote. "The current bottoms-up, open approach works -- protecting users from vested interests and enabling rapid innovation. Let's fight to keep it that way."
Eleven days later the UNCSTD buckled under the pressure, according to the Internet Society, and agreed to include up to 20 non-governmental groups.
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