ICANN und die Dominanz der USA Internet Governance auf dem Weg in die Internationalisierung

Internet Governance became one of the most hotly debated issues during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 and 2005. Discussions focussed on ICANN's and the US' dominant position in Internet Governance. ICANN coordinates domain names, Internet protocol addresses as well as the Root Server system and, thus, core resources of the Internet's infrastructure. It exercises its functions under contracts with the US Department of Commerce (DoC). More importantly, ICANN is also subject to oversight and control by DoC. Therefore, ICANN's activities may be rightly considered to be attributable to the US Government. Probably the most important contract between ICANN and DoC endowing ICANN with regulatory powers is the Memorandum of Understanding/Joint Project Agreement (MoU/JPA). The MoU/JPA will expire on September 30, 2009. It is currently unclear whether DoC will prolong the MoU/JPA or rather fully privatize ICANN's Internet Governance functions. However, also in the latter case of full privatization, at least oversight and control has to be performed so as to ensure that ICANN's responsibilities are carried out in the public interest of the global Internet Community and taking into due account the interests of governments who represent their people's interests on the international level. There are plausible reasons supporting the call for the internationalization of such oversight and control over the coordination of the Internet's core resources. This article argues in favour of establishing a supranational organization called, e.g., the World Internet Organization (WIO), at least in the medium term. The oversight and control powers conferred upon the WIO by its member States would be those currently exercised by DoC. For that purpose it would be, of course, indispensable that the US became a WIO member State. WIO's oversight and control functions would be vested with a Council for the Domain Names System (DNS Council). The DNS Council's in between 10 and 20 members would be state representatives and be elected for a term of, e.g., three years by the Ministerial Conference on the basis of balanced geographical representation. The Ministerial Conference would be WIO's plenary organ in which every member State is represented in accordance with the principle of one state, one vote. The Ministerial Conference would be empowered to adopt rules guiding the DNS Council's oversight and control activities. In addition, the Ministerial Conference would have the competence to adopt legally nonbinding resolutions or drafts of international conventions on issues concerning Internet Governance in a broader sense, e.g. cybercrime, spam, privacy, freedom of expression, capacity-building or multilingualism. The Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which was established by the UN Secretary-General in conformity with the WSIS Tunis Agenda 2005 in 2006, would have to be dissolved in order to avoid duplicative processes and entities concerned with global Internet Governance. Finally, several advisory boards representing, e.g., the private sector, civil society and academic and technical expertise could be established as subsidiary organs of the WIO.