Will the meeting in Rio change the internet? by Lucia Mitrova

Will the meeting in Rio change the internet? Not everybody wants change, but what they really seek is the discussion. And they are going to get it. The debate in Brazil is about U.S. control of internet core systems. This is not the first time this topic came out. In 2005 at U.N. summit the decision was to let the U.S. government in charge. Last year in Athens the first Internet Governance Forum was held, which gave governments a space to talk, but many, especially developing countries, feel like it was not enough. They demand the debate to be taken more seriously and hope for a change. Topic of the domains names in languages other then English, in particular. Some governments feel like they should have more say about this. U.S. leaders don't expect that kind of a crucial decision to be made, but encourage the discussion. Some of the representative thinks this is not the most important topic, others disagree. "What will be a shame is a repeat of Tunis pushing out these important issues. These were very, very hot issues during the world summit, issues over which people violently disagreed," said Emily Taylor, director of legal and policy for Nominet. Other topic the IGF is supposed to cover are spam, free speech, cheaper access and the key one is how to bring the internet to another billion people. Question about the change of the control internet remains still open and so does the debate. "Let's progress slowly but that's not to say go backwards or just spin our wheels," said Hadil da Rocha Vianna, co-chairman of the forum's advisory group and director of science and technology at Brazil's foreign ministry. This could mean that discussion will continue at next years meeting in India.

by Lucia Mitrova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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