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In Search Of The U.N. Internet Role
by William New
In a Tuesday meeting with the private-sector body that oversees the Internet-addressing system, the head of a U.N. working group on Internet governance outlined its schedule leading up to the next global conference on the information society.
At the board meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Markus Kummer, executive director at the secretariat of the working group, spoke at a special workshop. According to a participant in the session, Kummer walked through the process that the working group on governance for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is going to follow until the second WSIS in November 2005.
The group has 15 to 20 members, according to the participant, and the U.N. International Telecommunication Union, which coordinates WSIS, will hold consultations on it on Sept. 20-21.
Kummer told the session, which included ICANN President Paul Twomey and board Chairman Vinton Cerf, that the group will work on a draft report from this November to June 2005 and preview it at the next WSIS preparatory committee meeting in February. From July 2005 until the next WSIS that November, the group would try to inform constituencies about the report.
The report is expected to include recommendations on U.N. involvement in Internet governance. In the workshop, Kummer raised various possible governance issues, such as network security, unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam), intellectual property rights, data protection, and Internet addresses in foreign-language characters, the participant said.
ICANN officials and industry representatives reportedly reacted by cautioning against adding a layer of bureaucracy or creating duplication. They also suggested leaving core Internet functions, such as network security, alone because ICANN and other bodies handle those. That could leave issues such as spam to the United Nations.
On a separate issue at the ICANN meeting, the organization appears to have garnered the support to pass its fiscal 2005 budget, the participant said. A change could exempt the smallest domain-name registrars, who had complained about the additional burden of ICANN doubling its budget.
The Internet Society, meanwhile, announced that a former board member, Tarek Kamel, has been appointed minister of communications and information technology in the cabinet of the new Egyptian government. The Internet Society, a nonprofit organization with offices in Washington and Geneva, focuses on the open development and use of the Internet. It is the organizational home to the Internet Engineering Task Force and other Internet-related bodies.
Anti-Piracy Action In Asia
Copyright industry groups this week hailed actions in Hong Kong to curtail piracy. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) said Hong Kong's Customs and Excise Department shut three warehouses, eight outlets and a factory that produced pirated computer and videogame software. It arrested eight people in the operation.
"This kind of action against a major producer and supplier of pirate game software is a critical step towards significantly reducing the level of game piracy in Hong Kong," said Douglas Lowenstein, president of ESA, which represents U.S. computer and videogame publishers. Hong Kong authorities are working under international powers to freeze some $2.6 million in assets owned by the pirating syndicate, ESA said.
Separately, Hong Kong's High Court on Tuesday imposed the stiffest prison sentence ever for movie piracy, the Motion Picture Association announced. The court jailed husband and wife Tsoi Kei Lung and Ng Kam Fung for six-and-a-half years each on conspiracy charges after a multiyear global manhunt.
The two ran one of the largest optical-disc pirating operations in the world, Golden Science Technology, and originally were arrested in 1998 in a raid that seized more than 22 million discs. Before their trial, Tsoi and Ng jumped bail and fled the country. After two-and-a-half years on the run, Tsoi was apprehended in a raid in Lanzhou City, China. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver, Canada, picked up his wife. Both will face trial in Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission on Monday unanimously elected its chairman and vice chairman to lead the group's third year of work for Congress. The commission assesses the national security implications of trade and economic ties with China, and has addressed piracy, among many other issues.
The commission elected Richard D'Amato, a Maryland attorney and former delegate to the Maryland House of Delegates, as chairman. U.S. Senate Democratic leader Thomas Daschle of South Dakota appointed D'Amato to the commission. The commission released its second annual report to Congress in June and will begin its 2004-2005 hearing schedule in September.
Microsoft Critic Praises Japanese Warning
The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) last week applauded a decision by Japan's Fair Trade Commission to issue a warning against Microsoft for requiring personal-computer makers to waive their right to sue for patent infringement in exchange for licensing Microsoft's Windows computer-operating system.
CCIA, a frequent critic of Microsoft, said that by finding that computer manufacturers were given conditions that "unjustly restrict their business activities," the commission "has added its voice to the growing worldwide chorus expressing concern over Microsoft's abusive monopolistic behavior."
Microsoft has indicated it plans to appeal the decision, which would slow the legal process as it has in other international cases involving the company.
Also in Asia, a new plan in Malaysia will place a preference on "open source" software, which lets users modify the underlying code, for all government technology procurement. Open-source software is an increasing challenge to the approach used by Microsoft and other software firms that keep the code largely proprietary.
According to the Star (Malaysia), the new plan states that "in situations where advantages and disadvantages of [open-source software] and proprietary software are equal, preference shall be given to [open-source software]."
European Commission Consults On Copyrights
The European Commission has launched consultations on simplifying and improving existing European Union legislation on copyrights.
The consultations are open until Oct. 31 and are based on a commission paper that suggests existing EU copyright law is generally effective and consistent but could be improved. The commission will take comments before introducing new legislation in the next year.
"Seven copyright directives have been adopted [in EU nations] over 10 years," EU Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein said in a statement. "We need to make sure the early directives are consistent with the more recent ones. This type of nuts-and-bolts work makes a real difference to how EU law works on the ground, and we owe it to rights holders and content users, including consumers, to make this important body of EU law as coherent and as simple as possible."
Rural Telephony In Africa Presents Challenge
A report published by the Panos Institute warns that overstating the success of mobile telephones could mean that the principle of universal access -- ensuring that every person should be within reasonable distance of a telephone -- will slip off the international policy agenda as governments increasingly see the marketplace as the best way to achieve that goal.
The report said the slippage is illustrated by the omission of a rural communications structure from a pan-African partnership for development and the WSIS declaration from last December.
Meanwhile, the International Chamber of Commerce issued a new guide to assist countries in liberalizing their communications infrastructure.
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