After much anticipation, the Report of the Working Group on Internet Governance has been delivered to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. The much-awaited report has attracted great attention, due to its potential to threaten the hegemony of US based ICANN, the keeper of the root directory to the Internet. But instead of making such a recommendation, the report offers...four alternatives to choose from.

According to eWeek, Assistant Secretary of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration Michael Gallagher stated during an address: "Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying DNS of the Internet remain stable and secure." In other words, we're going it alone again. Sound familiar?

If you don't know the answer to that question, you should look into it. "WSIS" is an acronym that stands for the World Summit on the Information Society, which has been convened by the United Nations, and which is administered by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the global treaty organization that manages telecommunications strategy and related matters. WSIS has been chartered with such worthy goals as ensuring that the benefits of the Internet and the Web are shared by all peoples everywhere. But it has also decided to look into the question of Internet governance -- or, as they like to say in WSIS, "Who Should Govern the Internet?"