Digital divide a focus at close of Net summit
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Andy Sullivan]
The United Nations-organized World Summit on the Information Society, which ended on Friday, made progress in narrowing the technology gap between rich and poor countries, participants said, despite rich nations' reluctance to contribute to a development fund pushed by African states. The summit also saw clashes over human rights and control of the Internet's technical functions. At least 200 deals were struck to bring technology to the developing world during the three-day meeting, organizers said, from multi-million dollar commitments by firms like Microsoft to alliances not easily measured in monetary terms. Summit headlines were grabbed by a spat over control of the Internet's addressing system, currently managed by a California-based non-profit group called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that answers to the United States. A last-minute agreement reached hours before the conference kept the current "domain name" system intact, but also set up a forum where dissenting countries like Iran and Brazil will be able to keep "Internet governance" on the front burner.
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