Representatives from all over the world will attend this week the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which will take place in Tunisia. The discussions that will be held here are important for knowing exactly if the Internet will be governed by the same organization as it has been for years now or if this job will be given to a group that will be a part of the U.N.

Most users are under the impression that the Internet isn't run by any laws, it's a completely free environment and no one is in charge of running it. Nothing could be more false. There are a number of issues of technical nature such as the allocation of the dot-com or dot-net extensions and of the country codes, issues that must be attended by one central organization. For years, ICAAN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has been an impartial and fair referee and governed the Internet without any complaints from any party. But because of high internationalization pressures, ICAAN could be removed from its current position, so that the Internet will no longer be run by an American agency.

This argument also shows organizations, such as the European Union, that once supported ICAAN into managing the Internet now have different opinions and are in favor of having a UN agency govern the Web. This perspective is very pleasing for countries like China and Cuba.