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From...

European Commission wants minor role in Internet

July 24, 1998
Web posted at: 12:30 PM EDT

by Kristi Essick

GENEVA (IDG) – The European Commission plans to take only a minor role in regulating and promoting the Internet, preferring to leave its development up to the private sector, said a senior Commission official here Thursday.

"The role of the European Commission (in the Internet) will be a very modest one," said Frans de Bruine, delegate to the European Commission DGXIII/E in an INET '98 keynote speech Thursday morning.

While the Commission has the responsibility to help cultivate global solutions to issues such as Internet taxation and tariffs, the protection of intellectual property and private data and the use of encryption, it will act mostly as a forum to bring governments and corporations together, who will, in turn, come up with solutions, he said.

The idea is to help facilitate the introduction of global policies governing the Internet that the private sector and individual governments can agree upon, de Bruine said. Policies that exist only in individual countries will not work with a medium as international as the Internet, he cautioned. In addition, if policies are taken up without consulting industry, they will fail as well, he said.

The Commission's first step toward its role as a bridge for government and business was the creation of the Global Business Dialogue forum, which took place on June 29 and brought together 70 CEOs from small and large companies with government representatives, de Bruine said. The first outcome of these talks will be a green paper in June 1999, which will address many of the hot topics surrounding the Internet today, including the use of encryption, intellectual property protection and taxation in cyberspace.

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Another area the European Commission now prefers to leave up to the private sector is the registration and management of domain names, de Bruine said.

With the topic on the minds of many people this week – a meeting will take place Saturday in Geneva aimed at ironing out the new international domain name framework – de Bruine reiterated today the European Commission's support of the new plan to transfer domain name registration and management to the private sector.

"It is very important to have a broad, open process for domain names," de Bruine said. But now that the European Commission has seen its recommendations to the initial U.S. government green paper on domain names, which came out at the beginning of the year, essentially taken into effect, it prefers to have a very minimal role in the domain name game, he said.

The most recent white paper from the U.S. government supports the formation of an international, private-sector organization to manage domain names and recognizes the role of international organizations in setting domain name policy, which were the European Commission's main recommendations, de Bruine said.

Looking forward, the Commission plans to develop what it calls the Fifth Framework Program between 1998 and 2002. The framework will include its policies and regulations on integrated IT and telecommunications protocols, de Bruine said. With traditional methods of broadcasting, radio and telecommunications all merging, the Commission will have to review its existing separate regulations governing these sectors and come up with a more wide-reaching, open approach, he said.

The Commission's future role in the regulation of the Internet will be to regulate less, de Bruine explained. Instead, it will attempt to provide a vision, create conditions in which new technologies can flourish and liberalize the infrastructures involved in disseminating Internet content.

Kristi Essick writes for the IDG News Service in Paris.

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