The European Union’s telecommunications ministers today accepted the content of the European Commission’s draft reply to the US Green Paper on internet governance, which criticizes the US for seeking to govern the internet without international participation and will reply to the US over the next two weeks. The EU’s next step will be to finalize a letter to the US government over the next two weeks, which will broadly tally with the EU’s Draft Reply, published yesterday. The reply has called for international, rather than largely US, control of the internet, and its proposals include considering the International Ad Hoc Committee’s system of generic Top Level Domains introduced last year – to which the US green paper made no direct reference, although many of the elements of the paper bear a striking resemblance to the proposals of the IAHC, which changed its name a few months back to the policy Oversight Committee (POC), which oversees the workings of the Council of Registrars (CORE). Anyone can comment on the green paper through the National Telecommunications and Information Agency’s website (http://www.ntia.doc.gov), but the EU obviously carries more weight than most, and therefore the US is more likely to respond directly, either by entering into bi-lateral discussions with the EU, or by holding multi-lateral discussions that would include other dissenting countries. Although the US may not accept all of the EU’s proposals, the EC takes heart from the fact that the US is open to discussion. If you really want to do something, you don’t publish a green paper you just do it, said an EC spokesman.
