« The broken record of the NY Times | If you thought the Kelo Decision was bad... »
September 17, 2005

The United Nations to control the Internet?

By

Does a spider give control of her web to other arachnids that have contributed nothing towards its creation?  The question is absurd for creatures in the insect world, but in the human domain it has become a topic of discussion.  To be sure, it is not a controversy concerning the control of a spider's web, but of the World Wide Web.
 
Professor Adel Safty, Unesco Chair of Leadership and President of the School of Government and Leadership for Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, proposes a grab of the internet from its creator in this article from the Gulf News.
 
Safty argues against United States governmental control of the "root" — the master file that lists what top—level domains are authorized. He implies United Nations governance of the Internet, quoting Markus Kummer, the Swiss executive coordinator of a UN group called the Working Group for Internet Governance (WGIG): 

"The internet should be run multilaterally, transparently and democratically. And it must involve all stake holders."

Do the 'stake holders' include dictators and terror states?

The Internet was invented and developed in the United States with government funding. More than half of the world's 2,432,805,777 Internet protocol addresses originate from this country (source ).  This data describes majority rule, a democracy.
 
The "monopolistic" control of the United States government has yet to be broken. This statement issued on June 30th makes the government's position clear: 

"Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying DNS of the Internet remain stable and secure.  As such, the United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file."

If the United Nations has its way, the spider will be booted out and the international community will assume control of her magnificent web.  This is nothing more than a blatant attempt to hijack American ingenuity, an intrusion always to be resisted.

Eric Schwappach   8 19 05