[DMCA-Activists] Carlos Gutierrez/Condi Rice Letter on Internet Governance

[Seth Johnson]

> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/02/rice_eu_letter/


Read the letter that won the internet governance battle


By Kieren McCarthy

Published Friday 2nd December 2005 09:07 GMT


The World Summit in Tunis last month was overshadowed by the
global argument over internet governance.

Its biggest controversy came with the proposition put forward by
the EU a month earlier that there be a new inter-governmental
body that oversee ICANN. The US government - which currently
enjoys unilateral control over the internet infrastructure - was
furious and launched an enormous lobbying campaign, both public
and private, across the board to retain its position.

Most significant among all those lobbying efforts was a letter
sent from the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to the UK
foreign minister Jack Straw acting in the role of presidency of
the EU.

In the letter, Rice used strong language for a diplomatic
missive, to stress how seriously the US administration was taking
the issue and how determined it was to retain ICANN in overall
charge of the internet. European diplomats privately confessed
that the letter had a significant impact on their position.

The result was that the EU never raised its inter-governmental
forum again in World Summit meetings, and the end agreement stuck
with the US position.

This is the first time time the full text of that letter has been
published:


7 November 2005

To:

The Right Honourable Jack Straw MP, Secretary of State for
Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, London

Dear Foreign Secretary,

The governance structure and continued stability and
sustainability of the Internet are of paramount importance to the
United States. The Internet has become an essential
infrastructure for global communications, including for global
trade and commerce, and therefore we firmly believe that support
for the present structures for Internet governance is vital.
These structures have proven to be a reliable foundation for the
robust growth of the Internet we have seen over the course of the
last decade.

As we approach the World Summit on the Information Society
(WSIS), we should underscore the vast potential of the Internet
for global economic expansion, poverty alleviation, and for
improving health, education and other public services,
particularly in the developing world where Internet access remain
unacceptably low.

The Internet will reach its full potential as a medium and
facilitator for global economic expansion and development in an
environment free from burdensome intergovernmental oversight and
control. The success of the Internet lies in its inherently
decentralized nature, with the most significant growth taking
place at the outer edges of the network through innovative new
applications and services. Burdensome, bureaucratic oversight is
out of place in an Internet structure that has worked so well for
many around the globe. We regret the recent positions on Internet
governance(i.e., the “new cooperation model”) offered by the
European Union, the Presidency of which is currently held by the
United Kingdom, seems to propose just that - a new structure of
intergovernmental control over the Internet.

The four principles the United States issues on June 30, 2005,
reinforce the continuing U.S. commitment to the Internet’s
security and stability, including through the historical U.S.
role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative
root zone file. At that time, we also expressed our support for
ICANN as the appropriate private sector technical coordinator of
the Internet’s domain name and addressing system. We believe that
ICANN is dedicated to achieving broad representation of global
Internet communities and to developing policy through
consensus-based processes. We have also expressed our interest in
working with the international community to address legitimate
public policy and sovereignty concerns with respect to country
code top-level domains (ccTLD). We wish to underscore that, in
our statement of June 30, we supported ongoing dialogue on issues
related to Internet governance across international forums.

The United States and the European Union have long worked
together toward the goal of global access to the Internet. The
WSIS offers us the opportunity to reaffirm our partnership to
spread the benefits of the Internet globally. At the same time,
the security and stability of the Internet are essential to the
United States, the European Union, and to the world. We firmly
believe that the existing Internet system balances the stability
and security we need with the innovation and dynamism that
private sector leadership provides.

The history of the Internet’s extraordinary growth and adaptation
, based on private-sector innovation and investment, offers
compelling arguments against burdening the network with a new
intergovernmental structure for oversight. It also suggests that
a new intergovernmental structure would most likely become an
obstacle to global Internet access for all our citizens. It is in
this spirit that we ask the European Union to reconsider its new
position on Internet governance and work together with us to
bring the benefits of the Information Society to all.

Sincerely,

Carlos M. Guiterrez Secretary of Commerce

Condoleezza Rice Secretary of State


Related link

US wins net governance battle
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/16/us_wins_net_governance/)