Opinion - News Analysis   

"Freedom lifeblood of digital revolution"

Anand Parthasarathy

The Tunis summit of the Information Society has put the bigger users and developed nations on alert that the Net is not anyone's personal property.

WHO OWNS THE NET? A giant screen shows U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan addressing the opening session of the World Summit on the Information Society at Kram, near Tunis, on Wednesday. — Photo: AP

THE WORLD needs the Internet to unleash the true potential of its people, but the lifeblood of the digital revolution is freedom, says United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan — a gentle hint to nations who tout their advanced Net infrastructure while denying their own people full access on political or other grounds.

"The United Nations does not want to `take over,' police or otherwise control the Internet," Mr. Annan added, putting the lid on the controversy about who "owns" — and who should control the Internet. His remark that the U.S. "has exercised its oversight responsibilities fairly and honourably" has also ensured that the three-day summit on the Information Society, which ended in the Tunisian capital of Tunis on Friday, can move on to tackle bigger challenges than the nitty-gritty of who gets to allocate web addresses.

Responding to a question from this correspondent at the event's main press conference, on what was the next step forward, Mr. Annan clarified that with the Tunis summit, the process begun in Geneva was over; there would be no more summits. He agreed, however, that the U.N. would closely monitor progress on the 1212-point "Tunis Agenda" that was hammered out only hours before the summit began. "We tend to do things in `five year plans' and I think it will be the same this time — though we will not wait for five years before we look at the road map," he added.

Talking to The Hindu, during a background session organised by the London-based Panos agency, Paul Twomey, president and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — the entity at the centre of the " who owns Internet" controversy — said the mechanism for reform had been built into ICANN and it would continue to be broad-based and global in outlook. "We will never interfere in the way any country administers its Top Level Domain," he said. TLD is the mechanism by which a nation such as India for example, operates its own corner of the world wide web — with the ".in" web address. To address concerns of developing nations, the summit will see the creation of an Internet Governance Forum to ensure that all stakeholders including governments, corporates, civil society, and lay citizens have a say in how the Internet is run. This is seen as a small step for the people of the world, but a giant leap in the mindset of those who hitherto ran the Net in a unilateral fusion.

Tunis may not have changed too much on the ground but it has put the bigger users and developed nations on alert that the Net is not anyone's personal property.

Strong Indian impact

The summit saw Indian participants receive a good response from the global community. The telemedicine live link established by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) was a big draw: One half of a large TV screen showed a patient seated in the Malabar Cancer Care Centre in Kannur, Kerala. She was describing her symptoms. An inset video showed a specialist at the Regional Cancer Centre in Thiruvananthapuram talking to her. And the other half of the screen was filled with a blow-up of an x-ray image that was being evaluated. The loudspeaker relayed audio from both locations. C-DAC director N. Krishnan told The Hindu that the Mercury "affordable" health networking, arguably the first full-video and sound backed system harnessing the Net, had visitors mainly from Africa, seeking details of availability and cost. Also interesting, albeit for a more specialised audience, was the complete decision support system for ayurveda practitioners, "AyuSoft" that had its first ever airing in Tunis. The product would become available in India by March next year.

The India stall also saw ITC showcase its award winning "e-chaupal" rural e-biz solution; NIIT draw many visitors with a glimpse of its "Hole in the Wall" experiment to teach computer usage to children, and Chennai-based Midas Communication Technologies join hands with n-Logue, another city based player, to show how broadband base station equipment could be used to fuel single PC kiosks and telemedicine patient data collection systems. TCS, networking company Tejas, and the Telecom Consultants India Ltd (TCIL) were also part of the Indian pavilion.

"Made in India" solutions such as an intuitive gesture-based keyboard for Indian and South Asian languages and a solution that printed out text to accompany educational programmes on TV were showcased by the Bangalore-based Hewlett Packard Labs.

Dozens of Indian volunteer agencies also participated in the summit's IT exhibition — giving a desi feel to many corners of the exposition hall.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

President Mahinda Rajapakse
Intolerance that is intolerable
A U.S.-Japan equation to counter China
Not in front of the children
"Freedom lifeblood of digital revolution"
Iraq dogs Bush as he crosses Asia
Washington riveted by Woodward role
Alarming intolerance
Big threat
Mature words
Grim scenario
Quota in IITs, IIMs
Real heroes

Copyright © 2005, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu