The Impact of WSIS

I do think that the WSIS will have - or already has -an impact. The US position of being the sole rulers over domain space and IP adresses came under heavy attack, and even though ICANN was not handed over to the UN (as was to be expected), ICANN will have to restructure in a more democratic way and provide better access to developing countries. In my opinion, the rising awareness of the importance of the issue of internet governance is one of the important outcomes. Leaders of development countries are much better informed now about the mechanisms and this is the basis to make them get involved in the first place. I also find it important that the Civil Rights scene worldwide is becoming stronger and tries to take influence - e.g. in the WTO
.As for concrete steps, there hasn't been a satisfying outcome at WSIS05. A new global forum on Internet Governance has been installed, which is good because the discussion won't die down. There are lots ofprojects associated with the WSIS, but it's not clear to me whetherthey are new projects or existing projects that now take the new label. The digital solidarity fund does exist, but it's on voluntarybasis and this way doesn't make a big difference. Personally I thinkthat in many cases more money in the hands of developing countries'governments wouldn't be the best measure; more effective would be debt reduction measures, fair trade measures, fair interconnecting costs etc.
One concrete step in Tunis was the presentation of the "100 DollarLaptop". I think it is a good idea but it won't solve the problems. Again, the 100-dollar-laptop can only be a success on the ground of a joint effort to inprove the situation in the developing countries. Resume: The WSIS was an important and right step on the long pathtowards the information society. However, its concrete outcome is by far not sufficient and the UN, journalists and governments have to stay tuned to the issues and not let them die down.