http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5181327.html Should the United Nations run the Internet? March 30, 2004, 4:00 AM PT By Declan McCullagh The United Nations wants to expand its influence over the Internet, but would it be wise to let that happen? That question follows the conclusion of a two-day U.N. summit last week, in which delegates from sundry countries such as Cuba, Ghana, Bolivia and Venezula lectured North American, Asian and European countries about how best to run the Internet. Their demands varied, but the bottom line was the same: They want a piece of the action in just about every way. The event's agenda was breathtakingly broad, taking in everything from spam and privacy to intellectual property, network security and the operation of root domain name servers. Juan Fernandez, the delegate from Cuba's Ministry of Informatics and Communications, no doubt was sincere in the speeches he delivered at the summit. Iran was also among the delegates hoping to inject the United Nations into the process of overseeing Internet protocols, domain names and network stability. Before taking these folks too seriously, though, let's recall that Iran ranks in the bottom few percent of the 2004 Index of Economic Freedom, bans more than 10,000 "immoral" Web sites and jailed Iranian journalist and Web logger Sina Motallebi last year. All this raises the question whether these are nations that should decide the rules for a worldwide Internet. [...remainder snipped...] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Mar 30 2004 - 07:21:47 PST