Commissioner Reding about Internet Governance

The World Summit on the Information Society is opening today in Tunis, Tunisia, and voices in the press comment the opportunity to hold such a summit in a country that has a mixed track record about freedom of speech. It's amazing how in mainstream media the Internet equals freedom of speech, and this is great, and this freedom is every day increasingly threatened, not only by rogue governments but also by laws ellaborated in democratic countries. But this is a long and controversial story, and this post is not intended to be a flame bait.

EU Commissioner Viviane Reding published a paper in the Wall Street Journal today about Internet governance, and more specifically, in favor of privatization on ICANN, the organism in charge of domain name allocation. Mrs Reding expresses that there is "no substantive difference of views" between the EU and the US in favor of a free, stable and democratic Internet. Mrs Reding is not in favor of "fixing what's not broke" nor of calling in the U.N. Her point rather is to advocate in favor of a multilateral cooperation model where governments would directly participate in an a governmental advisory committee, building upon the existing ICANN.