Here at the United Nations' Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Hyderabad, we saw yet another domino begin to fall in the growing financial crisis. Despite the lack of interest in a bailout package by the Internet community and its companies, world governments seem to be interested in "rescuing" the Internet anyway.
In one of the first sessions of the first day of the IGF, the dryly titled "Legal Aspects of Governance of Critical Internet Resources Functions – Contributing to Capacity Through Legal Analysis," a representative from Brazil made an interventino where he used financial crisis as an excuse to question the entire concept of private-sector led, multistakeholder governance bodies like ICANN. He began by asking rhetorically:
He went on to suggest that "given the current economic crisis," it appears that ONLY governments can now represent the interests of the public, and self-regulatory bodies like ICANN cannot (never mind that ICANN isn't really a self-regulatory body, but a multi-stakeholder governance community that gives all aspects of the Internet community a role). To further his point, the Brasilian represntative pointed to the growing calls for government to get more involved in the banking industry following the financial meltdown.
As our friends at NetChoice blogged today, this theme was picked up by Dr. Hamadoun Touré, secretary general of the United Nations' International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in his speech yesterday. In his remarks, he called the IGF "a waste of time" and "urged IGF to commit to a structure where governments – most likely his very own ITU – have more 'muscle.'"
If these government bureaucrats have their way, the dominoes will continue to fall from the financial crisis. Given their insatiable appetite to control things, they can say the financial crisis justifies more government regulation and takeovers. It is scary to think that next victim of the financial crisis might be the bottom-up, multi-stakeholder governance model that has enabled the Internet to grow so rapidly.