By Tom Regan

In case you blinked, you may have missed it. At the 59th second of the 59th minute of the 11th hour, the two warring parties in the contest over who will control the Internet (sort of) decided to ... study the problem before the real fisticuffs begin.

The agreement meant the first World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) would happen without open "warfare," for now. New Scientist reports member states agreed only to create a working group of industry, government, and public sector experts to discuss the issue and make recommendations at the next WSIS meeting in 2005. Things didn't look promising last Friday when Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) president Paul Twomey was excluded from a meeting of government representatives discussing the future of the Internet.

Here's the meat of the issue as it stands.

Standards, technology, and regulations for the Internet are set by a group of private organizations, including ICANN. Under a 1988 agreement with the US government, ICANN controls the global domain name system. That means they are the ultimate decision-making body when it comes to deciding who gets an Internet address.

But this system of international governance is largely run by US companies, and that has the rest of the world more than a tad upset. They would like to see authority rest with an international organization, like the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU). In essence, this struggle mirrors the ones taking place in many other arenas. Who gets to call the shots - the US or the rest of the world?

Sonia Arrison argues in CNET that ICANN needs to be "reined in." Eliot Noss takes the other side of the issue, writing in CircleID that the nations at WSIS are better off with an ICANN-like structure.

Meanwhile, the Straits Times reports on other issues that the WSIS will tackle, including spam and pornography. About 90 percent of the world is still not connected to the Internet (think of the spamming possibilities!). Reuters reports that poorer countries, particularly from Africa, have been pressing for the launch of a "Digital Solidarity Fund" to help finance the infrastructure they say is needed to close the Web access gap. But rich countries hesitated, and this issue will now also be studied. Lots of studying going on here, eh?

The summit is a great idea. But getting dozens of nations to agree on the future of the Internet will be like trying to get a newsroom full of journalists to agree on what kind of food to order out for take-out. I fear that the declaration at the end of the summit will be one of "those" kind of declarations - where everybody loves everybody else, but from which no concrete direction can be taken.

Isn't that what this kind of gathering is all about?