Five weeks after the Guardian gloated that there was "little the US government can do but acquiesce" to demands that it cede control of the Internet's infrastructure, the US did not acquiesce to demands that it cede control of the Internet's infrastructure. Read carefully and you can almost sense the AP writer's disappointment, or at least his attempts to spin it as a defeat.

First, the article's title: "Nations Urge U.S. to Cede Internet Control."

Except that the US did not cede control of the Internet's infrastructure. Nor did it promise to at a later date.

Representatives of a number of countries remained adamant that U.S. control must be tempered if the Internet is to fully reach its potential. And even traditional allies of Washington considered it to have opened the door to the possibility of more shared governance.

Except that the US did not cede control of the Internet's infrastructure. Nor did it promise to at a later date.

Mugabe's remarks signaled that, despite the U.S. success in winning over a broad group of nations including the
European Union bloc, underlying complaints about American hegemony in Internet control still linger.

In an extreme case, complaints left unchecked could prompt dissatisfied countries to create their own addressing system, splintering the Internet such that two people typing in the same Web address may reach different sites, depending on where they live.

Questions about the Internet's plumbing have overshadowed the summit's original intent: to address ways to expand communications technologies to poorer parts of the world.

Except that despite assurances that the US would have to cede control of the Internet's infrastructure, it did not. Nor did it promise to at a later date.

You also have to appreciate how the only admission that the US won over a broad group of nations including the EU (which had previously supported internationalization) comes after the word "despite."

"The U.S. has done a good job making the Internet safe for robust political discussion and commerce, but will gradually need to start recognizing international norms," said Frank Pasquale, a law school professor at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

Except that the US did not cede control of the Internet's infrastructure. Nor did it promise to at a later date.

I'm really not looking to gloat here. Truth be told, I don't believe that the Internet should be under the control of a single government. I definitely believe, however, that it should not be under the control of many governments. Declan McCullough and Kenneth Neil Cukier explained all that was at stake, and the stakes were considerable. The anti-US side can redefine victory all day long, but they were supposed to at least get the promise of the UN taking control of ICANN.

It was, in fact, the fear of thugs like Robert Mugabe (last seen trying to crack down on email activists) taking control of things that prompted the Commerce Dept to pledge to hold on ICANN longer. The problem with this issue is the same problem with the UN at large: it makes no distinction between democratic states and authoritarian ones. The result of all of this is that there is now plenty of time to cool off and discuss feasible plans for unnationalizing (as opposed to internationalizing) the Internet and holding on to the freedoms that make it so worth holding on to.

And that's a victory for everyone but the bad guys.

Edit: AP Link Added

Update: I wonder if I might actually be misreading the tone. The BBC has a much more straightforward accounting of events and I'm much more suspicious of slants in their coverage than the AP's. I'm wondering if the whole "UN wants control of the Internet" isn't so much an effort to obscure the actual results, but rather an attempt to catch up on the story since there wasn't much coverage of the issue to begin with. Before explaining that US retains control of the Internet, you must explain that someone else wanted control. Of course, one journalistic mistake (missing a story with important repercussions) with another (framing the story poorly) is not particularly impressive. In any event, even if so it conveniently obscures a diplomatic success by the government while playing up the "The World Hates Us Because of Bush" angle that one frankly expects to see more in the BBC than the AP.