GAPS IN THE NET

BY IGNACIO RAMONET

LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE

JANUARY 2004

http://mondediplo.com/2004/01/01Ramonet

Geneva hosted the forst World Summit on the Information Society in December,
organised at the request of the United Nations by the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU). This was an important event: in terms of the
range of its remit, the issues and eventual outcomes, this summit will be as
significant for communications technology as the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio
was for the en vironment.

 The internet became available to the public only a decade ago. In that
short time, it has revolutionised political, economic, social and cultural
life to such an extent that we can now reasonably speak of a new internet
world order in telecommunications. Nothing is as it was before. For a large
proportion of the world's people the speed and reliability of computer
networks has changed their manner of communication, study, shopping, news,
entertainment, political organisation, cultural life and work. The growth of
internet-based activities and email has put the computer at the centre of a
network, relayed via a new generation of do-everything phones, that has
transformed all areas of social activity.

But this remarkable transformation has largely been to the advantage of
Western countries, already the beneficiaries of previous industrial
revolutions. It is now exacerbating the digital gap between those who have
an abundance of infor mation technologies and the many more who have none.
Two figures give a sense of the inequality: 91% of the world's users of the
internet are drawn from only 19% of the world's population. The digital gap
does as much to accentuate and aggravate the North-South divide as the
traditional inequality between rich and poor - 20% of the population of the
rich countries own 85% of the world's wealth. If nothing is done, cyber
technol ogies will leave the inhabitants of the least advanced countries
outside, especially in sub- Saharan Africa, where scarcely 1% of people have
access, and those are mostly men.

This problem cannot be ignored by anyone hoping to create a fairer world. It
was centre-stage at the Geneva meeting. For the first time, in an evident
sign of changes under way, there was a UN summit that brought together
representatives of governments, big business and NGOs. Not that everything
went smoothly, since the NGOs complained that they had been marginalised and
politically exploited.

The final statement (1) found it difficult to dodge the the stalemate on the
main issues. First, the proposal to create a digital solidarity fund failed
because the rich countries refused to commit themselves financially.
Senegal's president, Abdoulaye Wade, who has been pressing for the fund for
a long time, proposed to get round government obstructions by adding a
voluntary one- euro contribution to the price of every computer sold in the
world. Others suggested a one-cent increase in the price of all telephone
phone calls to encourage world digital cohesion.

Other major causes for concern were the control of the internet by
authoritarian regimes, including China, and the policing of private lives,
via surveillance and monitoring of internet activities, in many democratic
countries, including the United States, under the pretext of the struggle
against terrorism. Here too progress proved impossible. Citing
cyber-security, governments were unwilling to make concessions.

The third major issue was how the internet should be managed and regulated.
Here, at least for the time being, the US has the whip hand (2). But
Washington has realised the crucial importance of the issue, with its
effects on every area of political and economic decision-making, and appears
prepared to discuss it, although only within the framework of the G8, the
big-power consortium that runs our world.

Initially the summit had argued for a management of the internet that was
multilateral, transparent and democratic, with broad-based participation by
governments, the private sector and civil society. It also flirted with the
idea, defended by a number of countries, and also by the inventor of the
World Wide Web, the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, to transfer
responsibility for the net to a dedicated agency of the UN.

Washington rejected this outright, arguing that only management by the
private sector would guarantee the internet's existence as an instrument of
freedom. All these issues will be on the agenda again at the summit's next
session, in Tunis in November 2005. Meantime might it not be a good idea to
embark immediately on a large-scale technological Marshall Plan?

(1) Available on the official website at www.itu.int/wsis
<http://www.itu.int/wsis>

(2) The internet is administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN <http://www.icann.org/>), which manages the
addresses and domain names of websites. It is directly answerable to the US
department of trade and hence to the US government.

Translated by Ed Emery

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