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goalieskates
Premium Member
join:2004-09-12
land of big

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goalieskates to jaykaykay

Premium Member

to jaykaykay

Re: Who runs the Internet?

Aw Shucks, Why Not Let the UN Control the Internet? (PJM)
quote:
Here it comes again — another United Nations-sponsored grab to control the Internet. Next month, Dec. 3-14, the UN’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is holding a conference in Dubai, at which UN member states will meet to update the ITU treaty arrangements for international communications. The window will be open for everything from proposals for UN-regulated and administered fees to, as The Hill reports, language from China and Iran, which, in an effort to share with the world at large their own domestic practices, “could lead to online censorship and government monitoring of Web traffic.”

...

I’d include here a list of participants expected at the Dubai conference, except, in one those ominous foreshadowings to which the UN’s more troublesome gatherings are prone, the conference web site features its roster of “Announced Participants” as a restricted link, accessible only to those the ITU deems worthy. Apparently that does not include the great unwashed Internet-using public.

But hey, with the UN on the job, what could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, of course. The UN, in one way or another, has been eyeing the internet for years as a potential font of cash and lever of control. And the UN these days is the kind of place where Iran now chairs the Non-Aligned Movement, which consists of 119 member states plus the Palestinians — and accounts for well over half the membership of the UN General Assembly. All the usual old troubles apply: The UN remains an unaccountable, murky bureaucracy, lending itself to the manipulations of its worst members.