India opposes balkanization of Internet

In recent development, India has distanced itself from any model that promulgates governments control over internet.

What is the background of the issue?

The issue is regarding the control of the internet related tasks and its governance. Initially, till 1998, other organization on behalf of U.S. government used to oversee internet related tasks. Later, a non-profit private organization was established by the U.S. to govern the task. The organization is called Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Nations such as Russia, China, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan want governance models that seek to place the Internet under U.N. control while the U.S. and western states are hesitant to move away from the status quo position of ICANN-led Internet governance.

What is India’s current stance on the matter?

While India is not opposing ICANN control over internet, it has sought consensus from multi-stakeholders to develop an appropriate model for the effective management of the Internet. India opposes any model that propagates governments or inter-governmental control of internet, which as per India could lead to balkanization of internet.

What are the functions of ICANN?

ICANN is responsible for:

· Coordination of the global Internet’s systems of unique identifiers

^· Ensuring stable and secure operation of internet.

· Coordination of the Internet Protocol address spaces

· Assignment of address blocks to regional Internet registries, for maintaining registries of Internet protocol identifiers, and for the management of the top-level domain name space (DNS root zone), which includes the operation of root name servers.

· DNS policy development for internationalization of the DNS system

· Introduction of new generic top-level domains (TLDs)