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Deutsch: Europäische Kommission will staatliche Kontrolle des Internets ausbau...

The European Commission (EC) Information Society and Media Directorate-General have recently drawn up a series of six policy papers intended to increase government control over the Internet.

The policies have in view measures that include governmental control over the domain names that can be registered, the veto power of governments over new Internet domain names, significant structural changes at the level of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), an obligation of the organisation to follow governments' advice (except for cases considered illegal or damaging to the Internet stability) and the creation of two bodies that would oversee ICANN decision-making and finances.

The measures brought forth by the new policies would provide governments with de facto control over the Internet's naming systems and would end up the independent and autonomous approach of the Internet's domain name system. The new suggestion seems a logical consequence of the position of the head of European Comisson's Audiovisual, Media and Internet Directorate - Gerard de Graaf - at an ICANN meeting in Singapore in June 2011.

The recent EC papers come to argue for increased government control and foresee the shift in power toward governments within the next 12 months. According to the new policies, the governments are notified about the applications received and are to indicate which TLDs might raise "public policy concerns." This actually means that governments can try to block or censor any content or applicant that they want, by using the "public policy concerns" argument. The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) will be able to raise formal objections later in the process.

GAC, which presently has no legal authority, will soon become a legislator that can create a list of words that no Internet user in the world can register, as proposed by the EC papers. GAC members (should be able to) request the reservation or blocking of domain names at the second level under new gTLDs. It should do this by constructing a censorship list, which it calls a "reference list for all new gTLD operators to use and ICANN" say the EC documents.

Milton Mueller from IGP (Internet Governance Project) explains that the fate of the new registries and new domain names should be determined by users and consumers, and not by a central planning authority dominated by governments and special interest groups. "The new TLD program is also important because domain names are a form of expression on the Internet. Any policy that regulates the creation or operation of new domains based on their meaning or the content underneath them is, de facto, a form of globalized content regulation. Thus, even people who think domain names are not that important need to pay attention to what happens in this space, especially now that domain take-downs are becoming an increasingly common form of state intervention."

EC's second paper is damaging for the freedom of expression by introducing huge, unnecessary economic barriers to entry. What it proposes is to subordinate the Internet community's self-governance to a hierarchical control by the state, replacing ICANN's gTLD policy with a new one that will allow governments through GAC, to take complete control over what new top level domain names are allowed to exist.

These EC papers were developed not under public consultancy, but secretly, thus lacking in democratic legitimacy. The plans are to formally raise or even implement the proposed measures by the end of this year, in particular at ICANN's meeting in Senegal in October.

The second EC ICANN Paper: How low can they go? (4.09.2011)
http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/9/4/4893009.htm...

European Commission calls for greater government control over Internet (31.08.2011)
http://news.dot-nxt.com/2011/08/31/ec-greater-government-control

Analysis: EC policy papers on ICANN (31.08.2011)
http://news.dot-nxt.com/2011/08/31/ec-papers-analysis

ICANN - informal background paper - New gTLD process (1.09.2011)
http://blog.internetgovernance.org/pdf/EC-TLD-censorship.pdf

Payback time: The European Commission papers on ICANN (2.09.2011)
http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/9/2/4891821.htm...