WSJ: e-Meddling - U.N.'s Working Group wants to control Internet Governance

Wall Street Journal ^ | October 17, 2005 | Editorial

[OESY]

International bureaucrats and assorted countries are struggling to wrest control of "Internet governance" from that old unilateralist bogeyman, the United States. There's one big problem with this picture: Cyberspace isn't "governed" by the U.S. or anyone else, and that's the beauty of it. But if the United Nations gets its way..., the Web will end up under its control....

Internet governance, such as it is, currently falls under the purview of a California-based nonprofit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Better known as Icann, it was created by the U.S. Commerce Department in 1998 to administer the "root zone file," the master list of all Web addresses world-wide, which the U.S. has kept since the creation of the Internet in the 1970s. Ensuring that any given Web address, or domain name, is assigned to only one Web site is a key reason why the Internet has become such a powerful tool....

The working group's report says the governing body would respect freedom of expression. At the same time, it holds as one of its "key principles" the "respect for cultural and linguistic diversity as well as tradition [and] religion." On the Internet, it says, "that translates to multilingual, diverse and culturally appropriate content".... And who decides whether content is culturally, or otherwise, "appropriate"?....

The Administration can neutralize its opponents by moving ahead quickly with plans to grant Icann its full independence next year.

Without U.S. support for the U.N.'s Web "governance" campaign... the current system can't be changed. But Washington doesn't hold all the cards here. Countries could create parallel Internets. The same Web address might take users in China and the U.S. to different Web sites-- a nightmare outcome for online business as well as the vibrant marketplace of ideas that the Internet has fostered....

[stan_sipple]

If that happens Free Republic will be put on the "hate list"

[Savage Beast]

"Cyberspace isn't 'governed' by the U.S. or anyone else, and that's the beauty of it."

Yes. It's called liberty, and it's worth dying for.

It's also what totalitarians--from the corrupt Third World dictators that run the United Nations to the Marxist Left of America and Europe to the Islamic theocrats--fear and abhor.

The uncontrolled chaos of the internet is a glorious expression of freedom, and it contradicts and threatens everything that corrupt tyrants would impose on the people of the world.