Christopher Wilkinson comes to the mike:  "I want to remind members of the WGIG that governments have been involved with ICANN steadily for the past six years."

Paul Wilson of APNIC made a presentation on behalf of the RIRs:

We feel that within WSIS, the principle issues are those of the independence and genuine internationalization of ICANN. The NRO has called on ICANN to continue its work in this area, not by building a monolithic multinational organization, but rather by increased cooperation and collaboration with its core stakeholders.
We’ve also called on ICANN to work with the US Government to publish a genuine, unambiguous plan for its independence after the current MoU,
and to commit to this plan before the conclusion of the second phase of the WSIS. This is critical, to provide the WSIS community with certainty as to
the future form and status of ICANN after WSIS, a question which is certainly still unclear to many.

Also as a critical issue of Internet governance, the NRO rejects any concept of an alternative Internet administrative model located within any governmental or intergovernmental structure. We acknowledge fully that there is a valid role for governments in the administration of the Internet,
however this can and should be placed in the context of the current model.

Recently, the NRO posted a public response to Houlin Zhou’s memorandum on Internet Governance, addressing the proposal for a national allocation scheme for IPv6 addresses.  Like others such as the Japanese Internet
Governance Taskforce, we have serious and very genuine concerns about the technical and operational implications of such a scheme.

The assertion of sovereign concerns in this case is a certainly powerful and legitimate argument, however there are mechanisms either in place now
or certainly feasible, which may address the same concern with far lower risk. For the sake of the stability and security of the Internet, such
solutions should certainly be explored.

Finally, in relation to the WGIG, I’d like to revisit some comments I made during the Geneva meeting last week. It seems that the definition of Internet Governance, which is the first of WGIG’s tasks, is being driven by negative aspects of the Internet, as a list of “problem areas” of the net.

Or in other words, as a list of bugs rather than features.

The point here is that many aspects of the Internet are not being suggested as topics of Governance, simply because they currently work well enough
not to be on the radar.  These include such things as the routing system (which is pretty stable), competition between alternate root servers (which
would certainly be an issue in the absence of the concerted efforts which have been made to avoid it), and the global interoperability of all parts of
the net (which is assumed without question but by no means guaranteed).

I suggested to the Working Group last week that these and other aspects of the Internet must not be taken for granted, and the famous principle of
“do no harm” should be borne strongly in mind.  I suggested that rather than seeing Internet Governance as a list of bugs, WGIG should consider features of the Internet which are to be appreciated and preserved, and include
this consideration in the scope of its work.  The risk of overlooking them, and this is a real risk, is to “do harm” to the Internet, and potentially
therefore, to leave a longer list of problems for some future Working Group to solve.

In a very serious UN-style room, with hundreds of rows of red-clad seats climbing steeply upwards, we're listening to Nitan Desai (chair of the WGIG, retired UN) and Markus Kummer (secretariat of the WGIG) introduce the WSIS discussion.  Kummer says:  "there are many who now already start discussing what institutional arrangements should come out of this," but that's premature in his view.  Translation:  the ITU is making a big push to take over ICANN, and attempting to focus the work of WGIG on exactly this issue, but Kummer is neutral.

Desai stressed developing nations' concerns, both about involvement in internet governance (translation:  ITU has convinced developing nations that ICANN is leaving them out) and capacity building (translation:  there is an idea that ICANN has something to do with connectivity worldwide, and connectivity is too expensive for developing countries).

Desai also referred several times to the kind of people involved in ICANN as those "responsible for the establishment and expansion of the internet."  The idea is that establishment has happened, and now governments need to step in and engage.  He said [paraphrasing], "you should worry about the interface between those who have established and expanded use of the internet and the future growth of the internet, most of which growth will happen in developing nations."

Desai outlined three major themes he sees emerging:

1.  importance of developing nations to the future of the internet.

2.  in these nations, use of the internet for egovernment will be much more important than ecommerce; governments are responsible for access in these countries; so governments will be more involved.

3.  convergence between internet and telephony will be driving the discussion.

We're now having presentations from a number of people who are active in African internet issues.

The titanic battle continues.  This isn't (really) just about ICANN, although the ITU may be taking the approach that takeover of ICANN is a top priority.  This is about coalitions being formed worldwide to push telecom agencies to be the home of all rules for the internet.  Whatever "rules for the internet" means. 

200 years from now, this entire battle will be described in one sentence.  Choose one:

a.  At the beginning of the 21st century, the world realized that facilitation of openness for the internet (including many choices of rules, devices, regulatory regimes, and end-user applications) would best encourage worldwide economic growth.  

b.  At the beginning of the 21st century, the governments of the world folded "internet" policy issues into an international telecommunications regime run by the UN.  This medium is no longer in wide use.