184
Milton L. Mueller
to the GAC, sending a divisional director of the Ministry of Industry and Information
Technology (MIIT) to represent it. ICANN also made concessions, agreeing to rename
Taiwan as “ Chinese Taipei ” and (more substantively) to create a “ fast track ” for the
recognition and creation of new “ country code top level domains ” (ccTLDs) in nonRoman scripts.
12 Unlike ICANN ’ s new generic top-level domain program for ordinary
businesses and organizations, these new “ ccTLDs ” did not have to wait two or three
additional years while stringent policies and regulations governing their award and
use were developed; nor did they have to pay six-fi gure application fees or recurring
annual fees based on the number of registrations. Indeed, the whole concept of a
“ country code TLD ” was based on an ISO standard assigning two-letter codes using
the Roman alphabet to specifi c geographic territories. Since no such standard existed
for the rest of the world ’ s writing scripts, the characterization of these new top-level
domains as “ country codes ” provided political cover for a land grab by national ccTLD
monopolies. By giving countries such as China, Russia, and India a privileged and
accelerated right to get new top-level domains representing their country names in
native scripts, ICANN and the U.S. government were giving the world ’ s states an economically valuable and politically powerful gift in order to keep them happy with the
ICANN regime.
China and the Internet Governance Forum
When WSIS failed to bring about a major change in ICANN ’ s status, China acceded
to the creation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The IGF is yet another new
institution associated with the Internet that fails to conform to cyber-nationalist
norms. Although nominally created under UN auspices, it is a multistakeholder environment that mixes governments, civil society, the Internet technical community, and
business actors in nonbinding dialogue about Internet issues. All actors are afforded
equal status. Within the IGF, China initially took a low profi le. Its main accomplishment was to insist that the IGF directly grapple with the issue of U.S. unilateral control
over critical Internet resources. On several occasions it has expressed sharp (and valid)
criticism of efforts by the United States and its allies in the private sector to avoid
confronting those issues in IGF meetings. At one point a frustrated China publicly
expressed opposition to the renewal of the IGF after its initial fi ve-year mandate
expired because of its avoidance of the WSIS-related issues. That position was later
moderated, and now seems to have been replaced with reliance on a longer-term war
of attrition that attempts to make the IGF gradually become more intergovernmental
and a standard part of the UN bureaucracy.
This war of attrition attained tangible success in late 2010. In the early days of the
IGF, no one at the UN headquarters was paying much attention to the IGF or even to
Milton L. Mueller
to the GAC, sending a divisional director of the Ministry of Industry and Information
Technology (MIIT) to represent it. ICANN also made concessions, agreeing to rename
Taiwan as “ Chinese Taipei ” and (more substantively) to create a “ fast track ” for the
recognition and creation of new “ country code top level domains ” (ccTLDs) in nonRoman scripts.
12 Unlike ICANN ’ s new generic top-level domain program for ordinary
businesses and organizations, these new “ ccTLDs ” did not have to wait two or three
additional years while stringent policies and regulations governing their award and
use were developed; nor did they have to pay six-fi gure application fees or recurring
annual fees based on the number of registrations. Indeed, the whole concept of a
“ country code TLD ” was based on an ISO standard assigning two-letter codes using
the Roman alphabet to specifi c geographic territories. Since no such standard existed
for the rest of the world ’ s writing scripts, the characterization of these new top-level
domains as “ country codes ” provided political cover for a land grab by national ccTLD
monopolies. By giving countries such as China, Russia, and India a privileged and
accelerated right to get new top-level domains representing their country names in
native scripts, ICANN and the U.S. government were giving the world ’ s states an economically valuable and politically powerful gift in order to keep them happy with the
ICANN regime.
China and the Internet Governance Forum
When WSIS failed to bring about a major change in ICANN ’ s status, China acceded
to the creation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The IGF is yet another new
institution associated with the Internet that fails to conform to cyber-nationalist
norms. Although nominally created under UN auspices, it is a multistakeholder environment that mixes governments, civil society, the Internet technical community, and
business actors in nonbinding dialogue about Internet issues. All actors are afforded
equal status. Within the IGF, China initially took a low profi le. Its main accomplishment was to insist that the IGF directly grapple with the issue of U.S. unilateral control
over critical Internet resources. On several occasions it has expressed sharp (and valid)
criticism of efforts by the United States and its allies in the private sector to avoid
confronting those issues in IGF meetings. At one point a frustrated China publicly
expressed opposition to the renewal of the IGF after its initial fi ve-year mandate
expired because of its avoidance of the WSIS-related issues. That position was later
moderated, and now seems to have been replaced with reliance on a longer-term war
of attrition that attempts to make the IGF gradually become more intergovernmental
and a standard part of the UN bureaucracy.
This war of attrition attained tangible success in late 2010. In the early days of the
IGF, no one at the UN headquarters was paying much attention to the IGF or even to