Hanging By A Web: Internet's Internationalization Will Curtail Freedom, Liberty

Investors.com ^ | October 31, 2005

[Jim Robinson]

Since its beginning, the Internet has proved a supercharged way to advance liberty. That's enough for some governments to want to take control of it away from the U.S. They must be stopped.

These governments — Iran and Brazil leading the charge — feel threatened. They should. Iran's rulers show no respect for political freedom; Brazil's have little if any grasp of economic liberties.

So, with the help of the European information commissioner, these countries next month will meet in Tunisia. Their World Summit will try to enact a "model of cooperation" in which Internet governance can be internationalized.

If that sounds tame and idealistic, it's not. It very much depends on your definition of "globalization." In the aftermath of the Cold War, American businesses hailed the prospect of "going global," seeing new markets for their goods and services.

With the Internet as a prime facilitator, along with new pacts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, freer markets keep expanding around the world. Just as important, the Internet allows the rapid exchange of information and ideas, threatening despotisms everywhere.

This economic interpretation, in which some Yankee merchants failed and many succeeded, explains why the Commerce Department, in 1998, created the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN administers and acts as a traffic cop for all Web addresses worldwide. Wisely, the Commerce Department has kept its own paws off its nonprofit creation.

[Jim Robinson]

"The Bush administration opposes the Tunisia agenda. Last week three House members led by California Republican Rep. James Doolittle called for maintaining U.S. control. They echoed Minnesota GOP Sen. Norm Coleman, who introduced legislation to shore up the administration's position.

They deserve the widest bipartisan support. Freedom as we know it hangs in the balance."

[clee1]

The only way the UN will get "control" of the Internet is if the weak-sisters in the US Gooberment give it them.

As far as I'm concerned, they can take a flying freak at a rolling donut.

[nathanbedford]

Sometime ago I posted this:


Give them the internet and you have given them control over:

Every telephone exchange

Every television station

Every radio station

Every newspaper

Every magazine

Every post office

Every telegraph office

Every publishing house

And when you have given up all this and much, much more then give them all your money because you will also have given them the right to tax you without representation.

[Glenn]

2008 is upon us. I know of several Democrats who would have no problem handing the keys to the Internet to the UN. They like to play nice with the other kids so they will be liked.

Damn them.

[muir_redwoods]

"2008 is upon us. I know of several Democrats who would have no problem handing the keys to the Internet to the UN. They like to play nice with the other kids so they will be liked."

It's more than playing nice with the Europeans, it's knowing that if the Internet get's international control, the Left can once again control the news media. The democrats would love to have the kind of control they had when ABCCBSNBCPBS was all there was.

[Syberyenta]

from my cold dead hands