The United Nations Information Technology Summit has come to an end, but not before debating the issue of American control over the internet. It was decided that the U.S. will maintain control but that a forum would be created for handling internet policy. The U.S. has for now essentially blocked an offensive from developing nations, but the controversy will probably continue.
It is very significant that the U.S. monopolizes control over the internet, namely in the area of assigning and managing internet addresses. Currently, world internet address policy is overseen by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is under the influence of the U.S. government. The body determines whether new "top level domains" (TLD) such as country code TLD's (ccTLD) like ".kr" and regular TLD like ".com" and ".net" should be created. That may sound insignificant at first, but the importance of it becomes clear when you see that North Korea's ccTLD, .kp, has still not been allotted and so North Korea still does not have one of its own.
No less important is the management of internet addresses. Key to the management of internet addresses is having a URL connect to the right twelve-number IP address when you enter it. That is, if you enter "www.hani.co.kr" you need to be directed to the computer with the corresponding IP address.
There are thirteen root nameservers across the globe, and their role is to hold the data on the world's internet addresses. With the exception of a few in Sweden, Japan, and the United Kingdom, the remaining ten are in the U.S. The moment anyone erases ".kr" from the root nameservers, the internet sites in Korea become inaccessible to the whole world. Indeed, Libya and Syria, which once were in antagonistic relationships with the U.S., once had their data disappear.
It is time that we, too, get actively involved in the issue of who controls the internet. Talk about Korea being an "internet powerhouse" is all just for show as long as we lack influence in that area.
The Hankyoreh, 19 November 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection]
[Editorial] Take an Interest in U.S. ‘Internet Dominance’ |
