The political and economic importance of the administration of the internet's address system has been in the hands of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, since 1998. ICANN decides, for instance, on the introduction of new top-level domains, like .biz for business or .xxx for pornographic sites. ICANN is under the control of the US Department of Commerce. This irks some countries, such as Russia, China, Brazil and Iran. This is why, leading up to UN World Summit, calls abounded for handing over control of the internet to a UN body, something to which the USA, however, is opposed.

Creation of an Internet Governance Forum

After three days of intensive negotiations last month, governments of the participating countries finally agreed on a compromise. Under this agreement ICANN will retain the core resources of internet administration. The USA will therefore continue to exercise its political influence. In practice, however, this function will be embedded in a new global regulatory body that provides the political principles. Further, an "Internet Governance Forum", a platform set up by Kofi Annan, General Secretary of the UN, and comprising representatives from governments, industry and NGOs will discuss and monitor ICANN's activities and decisions.

Although the new body will not have any say in actual decision-making it is based on the idea that the internet doesn't need a central power and that decision-making can be decentralised and taken over by various specialist bodies with the necessary specialist competencies. While ICANN continues to administer domain names and IP addresses, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) would manage e-commerce and cyber-criminality would fall within the preserve of Interpol.

Supervision remains with US instead of UN

The internet will not, therefore, be brought under UN's control immediately as demanded, but it will essentially continue to be supervised and administered, for the main part, by the USA. However, with this second UN World Information summit a political process has been set in motion that could eventually lead to UN control of the internet. This was also emphasised by Swiss Federal Councillor Moritz Leuenberger, who gave a talk at the UN World Information Summit. He appealed for the internet to be placed under the common administration of all governments, with the inclusion of civil society, instead of this important public good and infrastructure being under the unilateral control of the USA (1).

At a press conference on the opening day of the UN summit in Tunis, Federal President Samuel Schmid (behind the lectern) denounced the host country's human rights' abuse. large

In his address and during the following press conference in the Swiss pavilion Federal President Samuel Schmid, who was there for the opening day of the summit, denounced the way in which the host country dealt with its political opponents (2) in no uncertain terms. Initially, his talk was broadcast live on Tunisian television, but the criticism was subsequently censored.

Part of the Swiss delegation in front of the Swiss pavilion at the second UN World Summit on the Information Society. large

Internet access in every village

Side by side with the political negotiations on the future control and administration of the internet, a second declaration passed at the summit called for efforts to bridge the divide between industrialised and developing nations. For that purpose, representatives from 176 countries agreed on the setting up of a fund to promote computer projects in developing countries. The United Nations plans that every village in the world will have access to the internet by 2015.

In addition to the official declarations there was much discussion in the copious WSIS conference programme that included hundreds of talks and podium discussions dealing with all possible aspects of information technology. In a number of huge exhibition halls representatives from the IT industry and NGOs, primarily from European and Arab countries, presented their wares at hundreds of exhibition booths, as well as in the bigger pavilions.

Swiss Pavilion with government and research

Exhibits in the Swiss pavilion were dominated by those from government offices like the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, seco, the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation, DEZA, and BAKOM, the Federal Agency for Communication. But there were also a number of representatives from industry, research institutions, such as EMPA and CERN, and NGOs, like the Access-for-all Foundation or the Initiative Design4All.ch.

The ETH Domain was present with two projects and talks, co-ordinated by EMPA. In one talk, for example, EMPA scientist Thomas Ruddy expounded on the ecological difference between web and printed publications (3). Ecological approaches like this one to the information society are being followed up in collaboration with ETH's Centre for Energy Policy and Economics (CEPE)(4). EMPA also presented another project in the Swiss Pavilion. Within the framework of the e-Waste project (5) and in collaboration with seco, EMPA is working on three core countries, India, China and South Africa on the environmental effects of the disposal of electronic waste in developing regions.

In the Swiss pavilion at the UN summit EMPA presented its e-Waste project that attempts to discover the routes taken by the disposal of electronic waste products. large

Environmentally safe ways of dealing with electronic waste

Getting rid of or recycling old electronic devices is a profitable business in developing countries. According to Nicolas Boehmer, who is working on the e-Waste project, this is the reason why time and again lorry loads of electronic waste products are transported - under the guise of foreign aid - from industrial nations in particular, such as the USA, Australia and Japan - to developing countries where they are split into their component parts.

The aim of the EMPA project is to uncover the transport routes used for this trade and reduce environmental pollution when electronic waste is dealt with in developing countries. For this, researchers at EMPA are working in close co-operation with Swiss recycling and disposal industries. The Swiss recycling methods to dispose of electronic devices will be adapted to the specific structures of developing countries which, owing to low wage costs, have low levels of automatisation. The project is to be presented in more detail in a future report.