The preparation meeting to the World Summit for the Information Society celebrated in Geneva should be the opportunity for the dialog between the net users and the Governments. Logically, Paul Twomey, the ICANN president, traveled then , to Geneva for giving his contribution in the debates, as he did this summer in the previous meeting celebrated in the UNESCO. He was really tired after the 20 h in a plane. The Australian had the unpleasant surprise that it was a fact he had to go out of the room with two guards. The Assembly members decided, at least, to leave this part of the meeting only for diplomats ! Some AOL and Vodafone representatives were put off. A rebound from the private sector ? A thing is sure : if the complexity in the relations between the industry and the Governments didn’t come from yesterday, these problems become more and more sensitive with Internet. Without the private sector and the searching, the net, in the sense it is known today, wouldn’t exist but the net is in relation with the citizen majority and this explains that the Governments aspire to have a more important role. This episode is, in this sense, as a discovery. Whatever the ICANN fans are thinking, it doesn’t have importance in front of Governments. They could think over the relatively failure of the Geneva summit, asking themselves if it isn’t the time of asking previously about the industry expert’s report ?
See http://www.icann.org/announcements/advisory-13nov03.htm
JCV & SB