[snarks_when_bored]

Syria, Brazil, China, Ghana and many other countries want supervisory control of the Internet to be taken away from the United States and given to the United Nations.

Sounds like a good plan, huh? I, for one, would sleep much better knowing that Syrian Baathists or Brazilian she-males or Chinese communists or Ghanian whatchamacallem's were deciding what I could and could not access on the Net.

[glock rocks]

Will the U.N. run the Internet?

Not for long.

[Sonar5]

Screw Them...

Let them create their own network, and call it un-net or some crap like that, and stay off ours. We Built it, go build your own. lol

[anniegetyourgun]

The U.N. can't even run the U.N.

[labette]

Look for Big Media and the Democrats to fall in line with this thinking. After all, it's only a matter of time before free speech is the source of their woes.

[glock rocks]

The wind's whippin up that old Kyoto smell all over these days...

[Mr. Mojo]

Does this mean I wouldn't be able to post that pic of a blue, bullet-ridden, UN helmet anymore?

[Martin Tell]

The matter is of course more complicated than this article makes out. The International Telecommunication (singular, not "Telecommunications" as in the article) has had authority over telephone numbers and routing for well over 100 years. As such they are well experienced and positioned to help with Internet addressing and routing matters. And while the ITU is nominally a UN agency, it predates the UN and UN politics have little influence on it.

I've been involved with two ITU working groups. Yes, the Syrian rep showed up and made anti-US points, but everyone ignored him. I found the ITU staff to be conscientious, technically savvy, and apolitical. All in all I trust the ITU more than ICANN.

[hershey]

The UN would use the internet to not only strangle communication, but as a way to tax every living person on the planet.

[putupjob]

I'm not worried about the UN. There would be 0 talent there. It would just be a jobs program for everybody's cousins who spend all day in meetings, if they're at work at all.

[Maceman]

Why shouldn't the UN run the Internet?

I mean, look what they can accomplish when they put their minds to it.

[commonasdirt]

"Ghanian whatchamacallem's "

You missed your chance. I would have used "Ghanian money scam operators"....LOL

[MaxMax]

Luxembourg

Why is it that every time I hear about that country, I check my wallet?
/Rhetorical

[ArmedNReady]

"and perhaps even the power to tax domain names to pay for "universal access."

Ii's long past time to demolish the UN building and tell them to relocate to TerrArabia.

[Road Warrior ‘04]

First: Confiscate all of the UN's computers and then kick there ass out of the USA!

Second: Confiscate all of the UN's computers and then kick there ass out of the USA!

[Cicero]

I don't know the actual percentages, but at a guess, 90% of the internet is in the United States. Sure, numerous other countries are involved, some in major ways, but most of it is American and almost all of it is in English.

You can find Chinese or Japanese web sites or Russian Cyrillic web sites, or hundreds of other languages, but if you really want to know what's going on in the world, you need to know English. That's one reason why American English has completely replaced French or the other major diplomatic languages--because that's where almost all the action is.

[Moorings]

We should have stopped funding this UN a long time ago.

[Publius6961]

Any delusional nut-case country who wants to control the inter would find itself locked out in total.,br>That would include, one would hope, the UN.

This totally reminds me of Africa. The few countries which had a substantial infrastructure, both cultural and physical, reverted to the stone age instantly when,in the name of "fairness" it was decided to allow its less "enlightened" citizens not only be "free", but run things.

If this comes even close to happening, I expect a new, US-only internet would emerge. That would solve tons of other problems.

[FreedomNeocon]

Thats like saying should the UN control the federal reserve (run the 'dollar') because its so widely used.

The ChiComs basically have their own 'internet' complete with government run routers at all national access points (so they can enforce such strict filter controls), they just some more control beyond their communist boarders (surpirse, surprise!)

It it ain't broke... don't fix it (or intentionally break it by handing it over to a bunch of demonstrated incompetents like the UN)

Won't happy anyway... typical UN result...

"Consensus not reached", "Will convien a meeting to discuss weather or not to have talks on forming a panel to discuss possible election methods that might help get closer to thinking about forming a consensus"