Internet Victory in Tunis

The World Information Society Summit in Tunis ended up with a compromise on the controversial issue of Internet governance that wasn't too bad.

Attempts to diminish the authority of the existing system of global self-regulation of the Internet centered on ICANN seems to have failed, and that was really the good thing. The ill-advised earlier attempts also by the European Commission at the end of the day come to very little indeed.

A new international forum to discuss Internet issues will be set up. That could well be useful. It will meet for the first time in Athens in mid-2006.

In the meantime, the work of ICANN goes on, and it remains to be seen if there will be increased interest in its work or the work of its Governmental Advisory Committee. The next meeting of the ICANN Board will be in Vancouver in Canada.

The Tunis meeting was a victory for common sense. The Internet works. There was no reason to mess things up.

At the end of the day that was the Tunis conclusion.

Freedom of the net is safe - for the time being